Cannes Names Its Godfathers

We’re still waiting for the Cannes line-up, but Variety reports that the festival will honor two up-and-comers in Spanish cinema. Both Juan Antonio Bayona and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo will be named “Godfathers” at the Critics’ Week sidebar. Does this mean they’ll have to dump their brothers in Lake Tahoe and make Harvey Weinstein an offer he can’t refuse? We will probably never know.

Fresnadillo is best-known for his decent sequel 28 Weeks Later. He’s currently working on a remake of Roger Corman’s X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, which sounds like sacrilege, but then so did 28 Weeks Later. So cut the man some slack.

Bayona got on the global map with the Guillermo del Toro-endorsed The Orphanage, a timely reminder that it’s possible to make a scary movie that wasn’t originally released in the 1970s. His name has been attached to the Twilight movie Eclipse, but his next confirmed project is Hater, where a British parking attendant hands out tickets in a world where people go crazy and kill each other on impulse. Sounds like a 28 Weeks Later remake, then.

The Slate: New Moon Gets New Sheen

• Michael Sheen is carrying on the great British thesping tradition of starring in any old toss. The actor has made his bones playing figures like Tony Blair in The Queen, David Frost in Frost/Nixon, and Brian Clough in The Damned United. But he’s fed his family with swill like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. He’s since joined Twilight sequel New Moon as the leader of an Italian vampire coven. Sheen has a way to go before achieving the hacky stature of Sir Michael Caine, but he’s off to a nice start. (Variety)
• London gangland dramas are two a penny, but London Boulevard is shaping up in the “great cast, lousy title” category. The film stars waifish Keira Knightley and shepherd’s pie-like Colin Farrell, and they’re being joined by hardman Ray Winstone, grumpy David Thewlis and the delightful Anna Friel. Farrell will play a released convict who becomes tangled up with in a waifish actress’ scrawny thighs. Winstone will be the gang boss who ensures mutual infatuation doesn’t run smooth. Booklist says Ken Bruen’s novel “packs one hell of a powerful punch.” (Variety)
• Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski has had enough shivered timbers, cheers, and would like to move on with his life. So does that mean more tragicomedies about depressed weathermen? No. The director’s staying soggy and sailing into Bioshock waters. Verbinski will be in charge of making the video game about a man stranded in an underwater city filled with psychotic fishy things into a movie that doesn’t suck. Arr! We mean, “glub!” (Variety)
• The wilderness has done wonders for William Hurt. The 1980s most boring actor has blossomed in supporting roles like A History of Violence. Now he’ll hopefully be bringing bizarre line readings and facial hair to the untitled Robin Hood film that we love to rag on. He plays the Earl of Pembroke, a powerful noble who served both Richard the Lionheart and King John. Wikipedia also claims he was “the greatest jouster of his age.” We prefer to call him “the Liam Neeson role.” (Hollywood Reporter)
• Looking for a little bit of that Wild Hogs male menopausal magic, director Kent Alterman (Semi-Pro) will direct Treehouse Gang for Warner Bros. The film, written by Tim Dowling (Role Models), centers on a group of adults searching for buried treasure and has been described as a grown-up Goonies. We’d make some “Chunk” gag, except that we spent our childhoods locked in a cellar without access to HBO. (Hollywood Reporter)

To the Edge of Pointlessness: Ghostbusters 3

Do fans actually sit down and say, “God, wouldn’t it be great if there was another Ghostbusters movie?” History has it that the original 1985 film made $238.6 million on its original release. The 1989 sequel made $112.4 million, suggesting fan enthusiasm had waned over the five years. No doubting the affection in which the first film is held: Rotten Tomatoes has it at 93% positive. Ghostbusters 2? A rating of 53% percent makes it an even blech.

This doesn’t reckon with the Ghostbusters zealot, who presumably has the tattoo, the home-made Proton pack, and the complete animated series on DVD. But now they’re bored. They crave more Venkman and Gozer. And, as MTV reminds us, the combination of an unproven wave of 1980s remakes (Beverly Hills Cop we can kinda understand, but Arthur? Seriously?) and the popularity of the supernatural demonstrated by Twilight, makes Ghostbusters ripe for exhumation. We already know No. 3 is in the works. Now GB vet Harold Ramis provides MTV with the details. How pretty is it?

“We’re all going to be in it in different kinds of roles,” Ramis said. “We’re going to be the sage mentors. There are going to be young Ghostbusters.”

The Slate: Reese Plays Ball, Amanda Doesn’t

• Reese Witherspoon let slip some info on the latest James L. Brooks film. She will play a “professional softball player” who is fought over by a white-collar executive and a pro ballplayer, who will be played by Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson (although not necessarily respectively!). Witherspoon said the improv-friendly writer/director had been working on the film “for about two years now and one day we’ll start filming!” Bill Murray is also due to make an appearance. (WENN)
• To lose one actress is unfortunate. To lose two looks like carelessness. So far, Sucker Punch is just unfortunate. Amanda Seyfried, she of Mamma Mia! “fame,” has decided there are better places to be then Zack Snyder’s “Alice in Wonderland with machine guns.” “Schedule conflicts” are being blamed, but maybe Seyfried got a whiff of Malin Ackerman’s Watchmen perf and decided Snyder’s feminine touch was best avoided. (Entertainment Weekly)
• Multi-hyphenate Andy Garcia unveiled his latest dream project Hemingway & Fuentes by noting that Anthony Hopkins was “loosely attached” to star as Ernest Hemingway. The film would look at the last years of the writer’s life and his relationship with Cuban fishing boat cap’n Gregorio Fuentes. Also navigating the ocean of booze mightbe Annette Bening as Hemingway’s wife, Mary. Garcia will co-write and direct. (Hollywood Reporter)
• In a small act of decency, Twilight sequel New Moon has staffed its Wolf Pack entirely with Native Americans. Smouldering alongside the Pattinson/Stewart axis will be Chaske Spencer, Bronson Pelletier, Alex Meraz, Kiowa Gordon and Tyson Houseman. The actors are of Lakota, Cree-Metis, Purepecha, Hulapai and Cree descent. Somewhere Jay Silverheels (Mohawk) is smiling. (Stepheniemeyer.com)
• Bryan Singer (X-2) has spent the week getting his ducks in a row. First it was reported that he was thinking of making a “hot revenge thriller project” with Mark Wahlberg. Now Fox has purchased the rights to comic book Freedom Formula: Ghost of the Wasteland. The futuristic graphic novel has jet-packs, genetic engineering and what sounds like a Matrix-style transformation of the world. Singer is producing and could direct. (EW/Variety)

The Slate: Important Artifacts from Adam Sandler and Dante’s Inferno

• He’s the drone part of the Brangelina axis. She’s a fun-sized kibbutznik. Together, Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman will star in an adaptation of Leanne Shapton’s … wait, they’re kidding, right? [No – Ed.] [Inhales] Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, described as a “Pale Fire for the Wallpaper* set.” (Amy Sedaris was quoted as being “jealous.”) It’s billed as a romantic comedy between Pitt’s aging alcoholic photog and Portman’s waifish food columnist, as told through their artefacts. Sounds like a perfect film for Wes Anderson, but expect the title to be shortened to Food ‘n’ Photos! (Variety)
• Adam Sandler‘s latest untitled comedy for Columbia is turning into some kind of comedy/babe armageddon. Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade were already on board for this tale of five high school buddies taking part in a Fourth of July reunion. Now Salma Hayek has been cast as Sandler’s wife, while Rock is paired with Maya Rudolph, confirming this tale is pure fiction. New addition Colin Quinn is hoping someone casts Halle Berry. (Variety)
• Dante’s Inferno is coming to the big screen, but don’t expect Billy Crudup to play Virgil. Universal are turning the popular Electronic Arts videogame, in which players navigate the levels of hell, into a movie. It’s just like Dante, apparently, except without all the Italian politicians. Scribe Dan Harris (X-Men 2, Superman Returns) is the poor shlub who has to somehow improve on the terza rima. (Variety)
• Brad Pitt‘s production company Plan B is going to be making The Night Manager. The film is based on a John Le Carre novel about a hotel manager who is leaking info on an arms dealer to MI6, although it would be nice if Pitt got halfway through making a movie about a clerk’s sado-masochistic relationship with an SS officer before somebody explained the confusion. (Variety)
• When you’re handed the pink slip from a franchise you helped launch, what’s a poor lady director to do? Catherine Hardwicke is hoping she can bring some Twilight magic to John Patterson’s young adult series Maximum Ride. Ride is a kid-lab-experiments-on-the-run actioner that’s not a million miles from Dark Angel and Kyle XY. These ones fly. Columbia Pictures are willing to bite. (Hollywood Reporter)