Spielberg Backs Ghost in the Shell for Dreamworks

I'm sensing a trend with studios and major producers acquiring Japanese manga classics, and now you can add another title to the list that just a couple of months ago claimed Akira as its latest marquee title.

Variety is reporting that DreamWorks has acquired the rights to the incredibly heady Ghost in the Shell, and will take the insatiably inventive film noir a step further by making it a live action 3-D flick.

Just to make sure it wound up in the right hands, Sony and Universal were shooed away from the project by one Steven Spielberg, whom Variety claims "made it happen" for Dreamworks. "Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite stories," Spielberg said. "It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks."

Now, you might have seen Innocence, a Ghost in the Shell anime from a few years ago. I didn't remember that Dreamworks released that one, but having done so, in combination with Spielberg's involvement, had to make the studio look that much more attractive. Not to reduce it, but simply for the means of comparison, if you liked Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell is for you.

Avi Arad of Marvel fame is also attached as a producer.

I think this is great news for fans of manga, I really do. Some would consider it selling out, but depending on the way the story is adapted, I'm not sure I buy the argument, particularly because it's not like you can't find the original version(s) of Ghost in the Shell at any bookstore.

Anime has become such a burgeoning industry over the past few years, but it has never drawn much blood at the box office. Turning them into live action Hollywood films could get millions of potential readers to check out things like Ghost in the Shell and Akira, and I don't think anyone would complain about that.

Atlas Is Still Shrugging

Vadim Perelman, the director of The House of Sand and Fog and the upcoming The Life Before her Eyes, is Angelina Jolie's pick to write and direct her dream project, novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand's classic book, Atlas Shrugged.

Like Rand, Perelman is a Russian born artist, and the effort to make Atlas Shrugged does not come lightly; only a TV version of the story has ever successfully been mounted, although Jolie has been pushing for a film adaptation for years.

ComingSoon.net recently spoke to Perelman, who says he's finished with the script - a daunting task all on its own - and is currently rewriting parts of the story in hopes of being ready for a Lionsgate-mandated December shooting schedule.

Perelman also says the script, based on the the 1,000 page opus, is a "reasonable length," but who knows exactly what that means.

When Atlas Shrugged finally comes together - and based on the scope of the project and a December shoot shouldn't be until at least Christmas 2009 - look for Jolie to play railroad magnate Dagny Taggart, and the rumor mongers have Brad Pitt (who else?) possibly being cast as John Galt. I'll believe it when I see it.

Natalie Portman Set to Star in Wuthering Heights

It was literally less than 72 hours ago that I was discussing with my cinephile father movies that have never been made: Atlas Shrugged (which is on the horizon), A Catcher in the Rye, Don Quixote, etc.

Then the subject of movies that need to be remade came up, and we both agreed that the time is right for A Tale of Two Cities, and then he suggested Wuthering Heights.

How weird is it that my dad and Natalie Portman are on the same wavelength?

The stunning Ms. Portman will star in a long-overdue new version of the classic novel by Emily Bronte. The film will be produced by the period drama-friendly Ecosse Films, whose past projects have included Mrs. Brown, Becoming Jane and another upcoming revamp of Brideshead Revisited, sort of a Brideshead Revisited Revisited.

Variety reminds us that there was a Wuthering Heights back in 1989 with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, which was able to rake in a whopping $624,000 19 years ago.

William Wyler is responsible for the iconic film version of the story, and even though it stands the test of time, surely after 70 years, some more attention can be paid to Bronte's classic.

Here's a question for you, though: What other literary classic should be made or remade? My top five would be A Tale of Two Cities, a Pixar Animal Farm, a resurrection of Sherlock Holmes for a possible trilogy or more, Slaughterhouse Five and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

Tobey Maguire is Mr. Good Enough

Cinematical is reporting that Tobey Maguire reads Atlantic Monthly.

It seems that Spidey wants to try the romantic comedy angle so his creatively named production house, Maguire Entertainment, has inked a deal for an article first featured in Atlantic, Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.

You can kind of get what the story's about: Don't waste your life waiting for a Prince Charming who will never come. Something along those lines, anyway. But there are still many steps to go before Tobey gets this one in theaters. First, the article's author, NPR host Lori Gottleib, will adapt her article into a novel, and then Maguire will take that novel and boil it down to a screenplay.

Here's what worries me:

A) Tobey Maguire starring in a romantic comedy

B) Tobey Maguire writing a romantic comedy

Look, I like Tobey in nearly everything, with the exception of Spider-Man 3, anyway. But I don't know about him in a straight up romcom a la Patrick Dempsey or McConaughey. Can he pull it off? Probably, but then again, Edward Norton. He hasn't ventured down this path since Keeping the Faith, with good reason.

But it's the writing that really concerns me. I'm not sure I trust him to do that, at least not very well. Put it this way: I have more reason to believe he couldn't do it than to believe he could.

DiCaprio and Ridley Scott to Join Forces (Yet Again) on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

It's getting nearly impossible to keep up with Leonardo DiCaprio's future projects. In the past six weeks, we've reported on three new films he's either working on or that are in the pipeline: Akira, The Low Dweller and Cocaine Cowboys.

Get ready for a fourth.

According to The Sunday Times, DiCaprio will work with Ridley Scott on the first ever film adaptation of Aldous Huxley's legendary novel, Brave New World. Though for years there had been much behind the scenes jousting over the property, Huxley's granddaughter says, “There is now nothing stopping this film.”

How did DiCaprio get in position to acquire this coveted novel? The way it usually happens: Huxley's widow became friends with Leo's dad.

“Laura and I were friends, and Leo was friends with Laura’s ward Karen: they were toddlers playing together,” said George DiCaprio, adding, “Laura always wanted a film made of Brave New World, but the technology was not there to make it look convincing. It is a vast futuristic world to put on screen, packed with many ideas which made it tough for some studios to deal with. And there were also family issues."

The family issues were linked to royalty rights for the heirs, which has since been adjusted.

In the film, DiCaprio is expected to play John the Savage, who lives a natural life "while the rest of cloned humanity is lulled into docility with sex, soma (drugs) and feelies (films that also involve the senses of smell and touch)."

Though there are no production or release dates to mention, The Sunday Times indicates that Universal will distribute the film, which, given Scott's visionary work on the similarly futuristic Blade Runner, should at the very least look the part.

Doomsday Director Shows Drive, Lands Drive

Neil Marshall, the director of Doomsday recently reported to have signed on to do an old west horror movie for Universal called Sacrilege, barely let the ink dry before signing another deal with the studio.

Marshall will direct Hugh Jackman in the adaptation of the James Sallis novel, Drive, which we'll hope is nothing at all like Sly Stallone's Driven.

In the film, Jackman will play "a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway car driver in heists," so says Variety.

Universal hopes to get cameras rolling this summer, if it fits into Jackman's schedule.

"This is something I haven't done before, and I've wanted to bring a British sensibility to an L.A. shoot and a scorched classic film noir concept," Marshall said.

Sallis has been called "maybe one of the best mystery writers that most readers have never heard of," and that does make Drive an odd choice for a Hugh Jackman vehicle, especially since it will most likely be released in the wake of Wolverine.

New to DVD - Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera won the Pulitzer Prize back in the 1980s. The book was a sweeping ode to the insistence of unrequited love, that the less someone loves you in return, the more you'll love them either to change the other person's mind or to prove to yourself it hasn't been love in vain.

You could make the argument that Florentino Ariza convinced himself of a love for Fermina Daza from the very beginning. After all, it was a passing glance that set 50 years of spurned love in motion. The argument I don't believe you could make, until Mike Newell's film version of the story, is that Love in the Time of Cholera is lighthearted and funny.

In the film, Ariza (Javier Bardem) responds to Fermina's wishes that he stay away from her by becoming a quiet Casanova, bedding over 600 partners in his life, all the while believing his heart is pure. Now, that character exists in the book as well, but there is a ribaldry here that doesn't fit. Granted, it's not as bad as the old age makeup used to convert Bardem, leading lady Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Benjamin Bratt from their actual ages to septuagenerians.


Bratt plays the doctor charged with saving Colombia from the ravages of the deadly cholera, and, while he's at it, he becomes the less-than-always-loving husband standing in Ariza's way, obscuring the path to Fermina's heart.

Bardem would be good here if not for the strange and questionable tone of the film, which exudes very little pain and a whole lot of pleasure for a man who spends fifty years waiting for the love of his life. Clearly, Bratt is no real match for him, but Mezzogiorno probably steals the movie, believable as a young girl who doesn't know what love is and an old woman who always thought she did.

But I don't know how this film will satisfy ardent fans of the book, who, presumably, would constitute a significant portion of the audience. If Newell was trying to take the story a different way, he succeeded. But he either went too far or didn't go far enough. As it stands, Love in the Time of Cholera is in a no man's land, a little like the heart of Fermina Daza.

Peter Berg to Direct Dune Remake

Director on the rise? That'd be Peter Berg, whose career behind the camera began humbly helming an episode of his old TV series, Chicago Hope, and will probably hit its apex (at least to this point, hence that whole director on the rise business) with this summer's Will Smith superhero movie, Hancock.

But the news just got even better for Berg, who has been officially tabbed as the director for a re-imagining of the 1965 Frank Herbert sci-fi classic, Dune.

An absolutely epic read, the first crack at movie success was more of a fault line; David Lynch's bizarre interpretation was shouted down almost universally, although interest in the novel was raised again when the Sci Fi Channel mounted a more successful miniseries (at least from an aesthetic and storytelling perspective) about eight years ago.

The scary thing if you're Peter Berg is that he has signed on without a completed script. In its coverage of the story, Variety indicates that "the project is out to writers, with the producers looking for a faithful adaptation of the Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book."

I'll be interested to see what Berg can bring to the adaptation. He's a unique director, really, one who spends a lot of time creating intimacy and immediacy in projects that push just a little harder than mainstream films normally do (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom).

Can he handle such a huge project, or is Dune just a Don Quixote in spaceman clothing, the kind of story that sounds good on paper and should probably be left that way?

New to DVD - Into the Wild

Christopher McCandless was a man of principles. Believing that there was more to life than a career, money and human interaction, McCandless left it all behind after graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1990. Signing over his savings in excess of $20,000 to OXFAM and heading out on a Kerouac-like journey across America to a destination unknown, McCandless’ story was featured in the 1996 book, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer.

And now, the film version of that book has arrived, directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch as the adventurous and self-preserving McCandless. If it’s possible to combine the two, Into the Wild feels like a cross between Homer’s The Odyssey and Leaving Las Vegas, the former because it’s a travelogue made more interesting by the human interaction McCandless swears he doesn’t need but is fortified by, and the latter because the very nature of McCandless’ philosophy and journey is self-destructive, perhaps even fatally.

When he finally reaches his goal, an Alaskan winter spent living off the land, Christopher McCandless had abandoned his car and set fire to the rest of his money in Arizona, adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and met two like-minded hippies, Jan and Rainey (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker), kayaked down the Colorado River from the Grand Canyon to Mexico, hopped trains up the Western United States, flipped burgers to buy supplies and outfitted himself for half a year in the Alaskan wilderness.

It takes Penn about 40 minutes to settle into his storytelling, bouncing from McCandless’ “Great Alaskan Adventure” and his reasons for leaving a good, safe life behind. Weeks in the bitter cold are offset by chapters in McCandless’ journey and the memorable characters he meets. Of these, a kindly senior named Ron Franz becomes his closest confidant. Hal Holbrook should be in line for an Academy Award nomination for his compassionate portrayal of Franz, drawing the most out of Hirsch’s intelligent, brooding performance.

When you learn more about why Christopher McCandless sought a different life, part of you will probably envy his courage, but it’s a courage that has cowardice at home. Rather than facing his real demons, McCandless ran away from the old ones and invented new ones. Therefore, it’s difficult to completely fall in love with the guy, despite your sympathies.

Hirsch brings all of those things to life in his best performance to date, and Sean Penn has shown tremendous growth as a filmmaker, crafting Into the Wild as a meticulous meditation on life and living it your own way.

Leonardo DiCaprio Tackles Akira

If you blinked - like we did - you would have missed a killer one-two punch this morning: Leonardo DiCaprio and his Appian Way production house will work with Warner Bros. to bring a live action version of the seminal graphic novel series, Akira, to the big screen as a two-film series.

And according to Ain't It Cool News, the haymaker in this two-punch sequence is that DiCaprio will star as the lead character, Kaneda, in the films. Joining Leo, according to the report, is the always solid Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who may finally leave the overacted TV series Third Rock from the Sun behind him. He'll play Tetsuo, which means nothing if you've never read Akira.

No doubt, they're great actors and no doubt, this adaptation is something that has been rumored and dreamed about (and in some circles, dreaded) for years. But will the combo work? Does having a star the magnitude of Leonardo DiCaprio make Akira too much of a slick Hollywood affair, in essence ripping the balls out of the story? Does casting American actors dillute the film?

They're all valid questions. I'm a little concerned about this one, personally. But we won't have to wait long to get the answers; the first film, directed by Ruairi Robinson, will be released in 2009.

David Fincher Can't Escape a Black Hole

Very few directors have ever handled paranoia and the psychology of fear like David Fincher. So putting him in charge of the upcoming graphic novel adaptation, Black Hole, makes a hell of a lot of sense.

In addition to being able to tap into the heart of the story, Fincher can be an extremely creative visual director, so much so that you don't even notice what he's done.

Black Hole is about an alien plague or virus that becomes transmitted from one teenager to another in Seattle in the mid-1970s. By transmitted, of course, we mean through sexual interaction. Charles Burns knocked out issues of what eventually became the graphic novel beginning in 1995 and concluded it a decade later.

Here's a passage from a character named Keith, the first one infected in the story. You tell me if this sounds like David Fincher territory:

"I was looking at a hole… a black hole and as I looked, the hole opened up… and I could feel myself falling forward, tumbling down into nothingness. For a while I was just floating… I was in this totally black place. It was kind of spacey but it felt nice…nice and safe."

There are a few other directors who, thematically, are good fits for the material; certainly Richard Kelly or Darren Aronofsky jump to mind. But Fincher has a better storyteller's knack, and when you've got source material this rich and detailed, you need a filmmaker who can guide the themes through the story rather than the other way around.

Variety reports that Fincher will replace Alexandre Aja as the project's director, and it will be the third straight Fincher film to find a home at Paramount, joining Zodiac and the upcoming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Coens Get Yiddish

It's interesting, to me at least, that Joel and Ethan Coen made their name as inventive writer-directors and they'll probably wind up winning their first Best Picture for an adapted screenplay. Sure, they'd worked with previously published material before, but never a novel, and certainly not a novel by one of America's great writers.

Perhaps seeing that as a new formula for success, the Coens will next adapt Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon for the film version of The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

Chabon (Wonder Boys) is just short of a miracle worker in writer's clothing, and while I'm surprised some of Chabon's earlier books (*cough* Kavalier and Clay) haven't yet made it to the screen, anything is progress, and being handed the Coens is certainly about as good as you could as from a major studio.

Variety reports that Columbia owns the rights to the book, which revolves around Jewish settlers are about to be bounced out of their homes in Sitka, Alaska by the U.S. government, which has decided it belongs to the indigenous peoples. Then it gets weird, and Coen-y: "Against this backdrop is a noir-style murder mystery in which a rogue cop investigates the killing of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who might be the messiah."

OK then.

No production or release date is set, but what a proposition this must be for the Coens: A great source, confidence from a big studio, and - one suspects - time and control over the finished product. It's good to be the king(s).

Ridley Scott Rolling the Dice on Monopoly Movie

About six months ago, we reported on a quirky little story developing out of England. Director Ridley Scott told Empire Online that he was interested in directing a big screen version of - wait for it - the board game Monopoly.

"It sounds about as plausible as Martin Scorsese directing a Paris Hilton biopic," said the movie site, and we kind of concurred.

That was in August, but Scott was recently asked, again by Empire Online, about his forthcoming projects, and wouldn't you know it: He's still dreaming of making that Monopoly movie.

"That's all in development," Scott said. "I've got no idea where we're going to go with that but it's the most popular board game in the world."

While Scott will next hammer out his Robin Hood twist called Nottingham, starring Russell Crowe as the less-than-heroic sherrif, with an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian on the horizon after that, Scott is still very high on how the story inside Monopoly translates to film.

"What's amusing about Monopoly is that it underscores the mean side of people. Monopoly changes people, the nicest person becomes a monster – as soon as they buy Park Lane, that's it, they've all changed. I'm trying to figure out what tone of comedy it could be. It could be a really big film."

It could be a big film, I suppose, but I have a hard time accepting that Scott is really serious about it. For one thing, will Parker Brothers buy into the fact that Monopoly, a family favorite for a century or so, is being turned into an instrument of pure greed? Sure, we all get that playing the game, but seeing a depiction of what people will do for money, land and power...well, they already called that movie There Will Be Blood, right?

Guillermo Del Toro Talks Frankenstein

What if...Guillermo Del Toro, he of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, were to make a new version of Frankenstein?

No, it's not a hypothetical situation; Del Toro told MTV he's slaving away in pre-production, working on drawings into his version of the world first created by Mary Shelley.

Having months to let the project stew because of a writers' strike that you may have heard about, Del Toro has not completed a draft of the script but says there are ways into the story filmmakers have never tried.

“The only way to do the Shelley novel is to actually do a four-hour miniseries,” he said. “But I think there permutations in which you can tell the myth in a different way.”

And, of course, the monster is always the linchpin for Frankenstein movies. What will Del Toro do with it in his version? “I will appear shirtless for most of the length of the film,” he joked. “You will be amazed at my chocolate bar physique!”

Twenty Bucks Says Anne Hathaway Will Star in This Modernized Pygmalion

A modern-day retelling of Pygmalion, Birdie Clark's novel, I Think She's Got It, has been gobbled up by The Weinstein Company, who plans to publish the book in 2009, with movie and TV spinoffs planned shortly thereafter.

I don't know how many goddamn times this story has been retold - or needs to be - but maybe there's something new and fresh about this version. Hard to bend you logic to accept that idea, but the Weinsteins sure seem excited about it.

If you don't know the tale by the name Pygmalion, perhaps My Fair Lady rings a bell. Or Pretty Woman. Or The Devil Wears Prada. Ugly, unrefined girl made pretty and acceptable.

A bit on Clark: The Hollywood Reporter says she's a former book and magazine editor who this year published Because She Can, which itself sounds a lot like Prada: "The story of a beleaguered young book editor working for a notoriously tyrannical female publisher."

Let this be a lesson to all young writers out there. If you have an original idea, put it away and remake a classic. Apparently, we still need more of that.

Josh Lucas Reveals His Tell-Tale Heart

We told you last week that directors Tony and Ridley Scott had mapped out an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, to be directed by Michael Cuesta.

Now the contemporarized version of the story has a star. OK, it has Josh Lucas.

The Hollywood Reporter says Lucas has signed on to Tell-Tale, playing "a single father whose recently transplanted heart leads him on a frantic search to find the donor's killer before a similar fate befalls him."

Did you know, incidentally, that Lucas has his own production company? It's true; the man candy from Sweet Home Alabama recently wrapped up Boy in the Box, credited to his Two Bridges shingle.

Lucas has worked consistently despite things like Poseidon, cherrypicking roles for which Matthew McConaughey has been perfect but ultimately too expenive.

Guy Pearce Walks Viggo's Road Untraveled

With one Cormac McCarthy adaptation arriving in theaters this weekend (No Country for Old Men), any news related to another McCarthy movie is probably worth mentioning. In this case, it's the big screen version of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road.

A couple months ago, The Big Picture and everybody else on the planet reported that Viggo Mortensen was taking the lead role in the project. As of last week, however, Shock Till You Drop is indicating that Viggo has been replaced by Guy Pearce (Memento).

Director John Hillcoat, who also directed Pearce in the brutal Aussie Western, The Proposition, is behind the camera for The Road, and given the tenor of both projects, I'd say it's a fit.

The Road is a post-apocalyptic father-son journey, which The Village Voice said, "may be the saddest, most haunting book he's ever written, or that you'll ever read."

Honestly, more haunting than Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret?

The Road is scheduled for a 2009 release.

World's Greatest Actress to Play World's Greatest Chef

Meryl Streep, she of the 14 Oscar nominations, will portray the late California-born French chef Julia Child in an upcoming adaptation of the Julie Powell book, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

Writer-director Nora Ephron is penning the screenplay and will be behind the camera as well. So that the title makes a little more sense, Julie Powell set out to cook each of Child's 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Amy Adams, an Oscar nominee for Junebug in 2005, will play Powell in the film.

Variety reports that Columbia is hoping to begin production in 2008. Streep has Lions for Lambs in theaters this month, while Adams continues to pile up credits; Charlie Wilson's War and Enchanted will both be released by Christmas.

It's been a good while since Streep has really stepped outside herself, co-opting an accent and diving head first into the world of someone else. It's what made her the standard for film actresses. While her work in The Devil Wears Prada was the best thing about that movie, it was still nowhere near the caliber of work she gave us in Sophie's Choice or Silkwood. So it'll be good to see her challenged again, even if this project does sound a tad too comedic.