Weekly Production News Wrap Up

By Tribute on February 19, 2015 | Leave a Comment

Ewan McGregor is set to make his directorial debut with American Pastoral. The film will star Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning, with Ewan also playing a lead role. The movie is about a couple whose seemingly perfect life is shattered when their daughter rebels by committing a deadly act of political terrorism during the Vietnam War. It’s set to begin production this September.

Will Smith has signed on to star in Paramount’s Bounty, about a man wrongly accused of murder who is trying to clear his name. The task becomes near impossible when the widow of the man he’s accused of killing puts a $10 million dollar bounty on his dead. Dead or Alive.

Morena Baccarin of the TV series Homeland has recently been cast as the female lead in the upcoming Deadpool movie. The movie stars Ryan Reynolds as the quick-witted assassin. The story revolves around Reynold’s character undergoing a procedure to cure his cancer, but it goes wrong, leaving him scarred and twisted. The film is set to release in early 2016.

Neill Blomkamp has finally gotten the green light to begin the new Alien movie. The director had posted a few pieces of production art on Instagram a few months ago, hinting at a possible film. Ridley Scott has been linked as one of the producers.

Kristen Bell has signed to star alongside Melissa McCarthy in Universal’s Michelle Darnell. The movie centers around a woman who goes to jail for insider trading. When she comes out, she looks for help to rebrand her image as a sweetheart. However, it’s hard to convince people to go along with her plan. It also stars Kathy Bates and Peter Dinklage.

New Line has acquired the rights to remake the 1971 movie Shaft. The original starred Richard Roundtree as John Shaft — a vigilante trying to find a mobster’s missing daughter. There was a reboot of the film in 2000 starring Samuel L. Jackson — both films were very successful at the box office.

Fundamental Films has purchased an untitled action-comedy from Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin that will be produced by Todd Garner through his Broken Road Productions banner. The plot is being kept under wraps, but the film is described as being along the lines of Rush Hour and Beverly Hills Cop.

Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions have extended their production partnership deal for three more years, through to July 2018. The partnership began in 2006 — since then they have made the films Cloverfield, Star Trek, Morning Glory, Super 8, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Star Trek: Into Darkness. 

Irrfan Khan and Omar Sy have been added to the cast of Ron Howard‘s third film based on the fourth of Dan Brown‘s The Da Vinci Code books — Inferno. Tom Hanks is set to return as the lead character Robert Langdon and Felicity Jones will co-star. The story begins with Langdon suffering from amnesia. He gets help from Dr. Sienna Brooks (Jones) to try and recover memories in order to stop a madman from releasing a global epidemic.

Scarlett Johansson has agreed to star in Universal and Imagine Entertainment’s upcoming film The Psychopath Test. Jay Roach has signed on as director and Kristin Gore will be adapting a screenplay of the book by Jon Ronson. The book talks about the idea that one person, out of every 100, is a psychopath. The book also explores how psychopaths have been diagnosed and treated, including methods used in the past. ~Andrew Siwik

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