The ink has barely dried yet on Disney's surprise Star Wars Episode VIII release date announcement earlier today, but 20th Century Fox is already backing down from what's sure to be a box office behemoth.
Brad Pitt's production company Plan B has optioned feature rights to The Jaunt, a 1981 Stephen King short story about a futuristic method of teleportation. Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the duo behind 2013 frightener Mama (he directed, she produced and both collaborated on the screenplay), have been tapped to develop, with Andy directing.
Fox 2000 and Pacific Standard’s Reese Witherspoon, Bruna Papandrea and Natalie Krinsky have closed a deal to adapt Gayle Tzemach Lemmon's upcoming book Ashley's War: The Untold Story of A Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield.
At least they're taking it seriously. Though fans of the terrific BBC crime drama Luther froze at news of a Fox remake, which will not star Idris Elba as the tormented DCI, they can take a slight sigh of relief now the network has opted to push the cast-contingent drama out of pilot season.
Just yesterday, we brought you the first set photo from Guy Ritchie's medieval epic Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur, which found star Charlie Hunnam posing opposite the director on the first day of production. Now, Warner Bros. has unsheathed a synopsis for the pic, which will serve to launch a franchise of six blockbuster films, all to be spun out of Arthurian lore.
Josh Duhamel and Alice Eve have joined Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino in legal thriller Beyond Deceit, to be directed by scribe Shintaro Shimosawa (Fox's The Following) in his directorial debut.
Though solid reviews for his Liam Neeson actioner Run All Night mean Jaume Collet-Serra is probably having a pretty great week, it hasn't been all smooth sailing for the director lately. Collet-Serra has been diligently working on an Akira adaptation for multiple years now, but recent comments he made about the project are sure to disappoint fans of the manga.
