Christophe Gans, who first turned heads in the U.S. by making Brotherhood of the Wolf and last gave us Silent Hill back in 2006, finally has another project on the horizon – and it’s a doozy. The French director, perhaps best known for his moody yet kinetic visual style, will be taking a crack at playing around with the classic Beauty and the Beast story, starting this October. Gans told THR, “Although I will keep to a form of storytelling of this timeless fairy tale that is in keeping with the same pace and characters as the original, I will surprise the audience by creating a completely new visual universe never experienced before and produce images of an unparalleled quality,” then added, “Every single one of my movies has presented me with a challenge but this one is, by far, the most exciting and rewarding.” Though I’ve yet to be rewarded by Gans’ new endeavor, I’m certainly already excited about it. But, honestly, it’s not necessarily because of Gans’ involvement, and it’s not even for any particular love of the Beauty and the Beast story. No, the reason my blood is pumping is the quality of the cast that is being assembled. First off, Gans has cast one of the true heavyweights of the acting world, Vincent Cassel, in the role of the beast. From his work in Gaspar Noé’s films, to his starring role in the Mesrine movies, to his role as the ballet instructor in Black Swan, Cassel [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Director Todd Phillips has made three films for Warner Bros. so far: The Hangover, Due Date, and The Hangover Part II. Say what you will about their varying degrees of quality, but there’s no denying the fact that they were all huge financial successes for both Phillips and the studio, so Warner Bros. is obviously very committed to being in the Todd Phillips business. To that end they’ve signed him to a new first look deal that will keep him making movies for the studio until at least the end of 2013, and will give him first crack at quite a few potential projects. Deadline Dix Hills has a rundown of four different scripts that are all being put together as potential Phillips vehicles.

Now that John le Carré’s spy novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” has been adapted into a highly acclaimed film of the same name that made a bunch of money on a worldwide level, we can probably expect to see a flood of his other works suddenly making their way to the big screen. And at the head of that pack is director Anton Corbijn, who plans to make an adaptation of Le Carré’s “A Most Wanted Man” the followup to his 2010 film The American. The screenplay has been adapted by Edge of Darkness writer Drew Bovell, and tells the story of a mysterious Russian immigrant in Germany. Or, as the book’s Amazon description puts it: “A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career. In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Freres, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. A triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the so-called War on Terror, the spies of three nations converge upon the innocents.” The big news about this film is that the [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Director Abel Ferrara is no stranger to making movies about creeps – he did direct the original Bad Lieutenant after all – so he’s probably as good a choice as any to make a dramatization of the recent scandal French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been involved in. For those uninitiated, Strauss-Kahn (or DSK, as the French adorably refer to him) was the former director of the International Monetary Fund and had a pretty high profile campaign for the French presidency running before he was arrested in New York for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel maid. A sexual encounter between the two was confirmed, but exactly how consensual it really got was never revealed, and eventually the case was dismissed; not before the incident garnered a tidal wave of media attention and derailed the man’s political career, however. Anyway, on to the movie news. Ferrara has told Le Monde that his next film will be a dramatization of the incident starring Gérard Depardieu as the politician and Isabelle Adjani as his very angry wife. It will be filmed in New York, Washington, and France, places that Ferrara describes as being “all spots of power.” In an interview on Ferrara’s site screenwriter Chris Zois said that the movie is, “really going to talk about the relationship between two people – two people who are larger than life, but in many ways very much like ordinary people under stress.”

Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull has been trying to get his Here There Be Monsters project going for quite a while. It’s a story of his own creation that tells the tale of John Paul Jones’ life as a Revolutionary War-era Naval Captain, but with a twist. In this telling of Jones’ story, there are added giant sea monsters and the like. As if Jones’ exploits weren’t exciting enough already. In order to shepherd his dream to reality, Tull hired veteran screenwriter Brian Helgeland to get together a script, and he’s been searching around for a director as well. At one point it was looking like Robert Zemeckis might come on board, but that never came to fruition, and not much has been said about the film since. Hope is not lost for Tull and his dream of telling stories where historical figures grapple with giant squid, however, as someone close to the situation is telling Vulture that the project has new life.

Not content to just be a highly regarded, hugely successful author whose novels often get made into movies, Cormac McCarthy has decided that he wants to get into the Hollywood spec script writing business himself. Normally I would say that this is a bad plan for the future, but this is Cormac McCarthy…who’s going to pass on buying one of his scripts? The fruits of his screenwriting labors so far are a completed screenplay titled The Counselor, a story about a respected lawyer who tries his hand at working in the narcotics trade (to what can only be assumed are disastrous results). As can be imagined, as soon as there was word that there was a script written by Cormac McCarthy in existence, it was immediately bought up in a big money deal. And coincidentally enough, it was The Road producers Nick Weschler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz that scooped it up. When talking about the purchase, Steve Schwartz told Deadline South Shields that, “The spec falls smack in the middle of what everyone responds to with Cormac’s novels…Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.” Given such high praise and pedigree it also shouldn’t come as a surprise that The Counselor already [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Yesterday I promised that if we just waited patiently, the remaining questions about Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming movie Side Effects would soon be answered, and a whole new set of questions would probably arise. Oh, how true that was. Before we get into all that, let’s do a brief rundown of the reporting that’s been done on this movie so far. First it was reported that a “psychopharmacology thriller” that Soderbergh was working on called Bitter Pill was getting its funding through a partnership between Annapurna Pictures and Open Road Films, but that the movie would be called Side Effects going forward. Then came news that Annapurna had pulled their funding, possibly based on concerns they had with Blake Lively being cast in the starring role. It was also theorized that the production was looking at a short list of new actresses to take Lively’s place and save the film some face. Finally, the casting rumors looked to be true, because it was announced that Rooney Mara had been chosen to take Lively’s place as the lead. We were then left only with the question of who would come on board to take Annapurna’s place as this movie’s sugar daddy.

Recently, it was reported that Universal Pictures ended their deal with Hasbro – meaning that movies adapted from Hasbro products that nobody wanted to see in the first place, like Ouija Board and Monopoly, now have very questionable futures. Or, at least, you would think that they would have very questionable futures. In actuality they all seem to be getting scooped up by other studios pretty quickly. First, Relativity Media acquired the rights to Stretch Armstrong, and now, in news that surely must be ushering in the end of the world, Sony and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison are teaming up to make Candy Land, which Sandler himself intends on both co-writing and starring in. Kevin Lima (Enchanted) is attached to direct the project, with Robert Smigel and Sandler in talks to pen the screenplay. Why make a Candy Land movie? Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad says, ”Candy Land is more than just a game. It is a brand that children, parents and grandparents know and love. The world of Candy Land offers an extraordinary canvas upon which to create a fantastical, live-action family adventure film with a larger than life part for Adam. We are thrilled to partner with Hasbro and Happy Madison on this project.”

Jeff Smith’s beloved comic series “Bone,” a fantasy story about three lumpy, white, people-looking things, has been the subject of movie adaptation talks for quite some time. First Paramount was going to do something with the property, then Nickelodeon, and finally the rights landed over at Warner Bros., where last word was that they were planning a CG-animated trilogy, news that was beefed up by a four-minute short that showed off what the Bone cousins could look like. I’m not certain if these new developments are attached to that short in any way, or even if a trilogy is still the direction WB is planning on going with this one, but according to Heat Vision there are new developments concerning at least some sort of animated Bone project. They say that Sean Patrick Smith, the creator of the ABC Family series Greek, has been tapped to write a script for a Bone film, with Peter Pan director P.J. Hogan coming on to helm. Animal Logic, the animation house behind Happy Feet 2 and that Zack Snyder movie about the talking owls, is set to produce, so the plan right now is for Smith to turn in his script, Hogan to do a polish, with the production of the film then taking place in Australia, where both Hogan and Animal Logic are located.

Back in November, we reported that newly un-retired director Steven Soderbergh’s next film would be a thriller about the world of psychopharmacology called Bitter Pill. Following Soderbergh’s projects has been kind of a roller coaster ride lately though, so having faith that Bitter Pill was actually going to get made was kind of a…ahem, tough pill to swallow. But things are now looking a lot better on that front. While this is still the Scott Z. Burns script that Soderbergh intends to work on, the film has now been retitled Side Effects, a seemingly arbitrary change that at least points to the fact that active work is being done on development. And that’s not even the big news. The big news is that heiress Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures is stepping up to fund the film, alongside Open Road Films, who will be handling the domestic distribution. That kind of makes this one a lot more official, and seeing as Open Road is hoping for a release in the first half of 2013, shooting is scheduled to start in April and the casting process should begin ASAP. I would imagine that Soderbergh is calling up Matt Damon and George Clooney as we speak. [THR]

Pretty much from the first moment that the Hunger Games movie became official, Lionsgate has been confident that it’s going to be a huge hit. The entire production of the film has been the subject of a media blitz too large to recap here. So it comes as no surprise that even before the first film has been released, work has begun on getting its sequel together. For those not in the know, Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” was the first part of a trilogy of novels whose subsequent books are titled “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay.” So what’s the news on development for Catching Fire? The Wrap is reporting that not only has Lionsgate secured Hunger Games director Gary Ross to come back and do the sequel, but they’ve also hired screenwriter Simon Beaufoy to come on and adapt the book into a screenplay. Beaufoy has an impressive resume that includes films like Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, so I don’t really think his hiring can be seen as a disappointment, even though it might point to the notion that Collins and Ross might not be as hands-on with the writing process on this one as they were the first.

Star of film The Artist and all-around charming guy Jean Dujardin is probably going to be getting a lot more attention now that he’s won a Golden Globe for his work on Michel Hazanavicius’ well-liked silent film throwback. As a matter of fact, The Hollywood Reporter already has word of a project in Dujardin’s future that has my interest peaked. The Artist producer Thomas Langmann has told the trade that his next project will be a remake of Claude Berri’s 1977 French release One Wild Moment (Un moment d’égarement), a film that was about two adult best friends running into some issues when one of their daughters falls for the other. You know, romantically. If that plot sounds familiar to you, maybe that’s because One Wild Moment has already been remade once, as the 1984 English language film Blame It On Rio, which starred names like Michael Caine and Demi Moore and had some sweet boobs in it if my pubescent self is remembering correctly.

Robert Mapplethorpe was an openly homosexual, 60s era artist whose provocative work was very controversial in its time. So, of course, people have been saying for quite a while now that James Franco should play him in a movie. I mean, that’s kind of Franco’s bag, isn’t it? Johnny Depp puts on stupid wigs in Tim Burton movies and Franco plays historical gay figures from the 60s. It’s what we’ve become comfortable with, and what we will remain comfortable with, because THR is reporting that Franco is now finally attached to play Mapplethorpe in an upcoming film.

If you would have told me a couple years ago, when I still had the bad taste of Cloverfield in my mouth, that J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot had a new action film in the works, my ears probably wouldn’t have perked up much. But right now I’m still riding off the high of Super 8 and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, so questions of what Bad Robot is up to next are very much on my mind. Talk about a good 2011. Now, this company is famously secretive, so of course not much is know about their new project, but Variety is reporting that Abrams and his partner Bryan Burk, along with Let Me In director Matt Reeves, are set to produce a new action movie that will be directed by Brad Parker, coming from a script by Michael Gilio. Parker has one feature under his belt, The Diary of Lawson Oxford, and he did work with Reeves as a second unit director on Let Me In, but he seems to be a filmmaker that comes from the school of David Fincher. He cut his teeth doing a lot of commercial work and work for MTV, and then he stepped into the film world by doing digital effects for Fight Club back in the late 90s. It sounds to me like he’s learned at the feet of all the right people, so I’m interested to see what he has to offer as the man in charge.

Despite the fact that it seemed like a pipe dream when the idea was first kicked around, development on a feature film version of the failed Starz sitcom Party Down seems to be chugging along steadily and assuredly. First the movie was just a twinkle in its creators eyes, then things started looking better as everyone involved began synching up their schedules, and now the whole thing appears to be a done deal. At least according to Megan Mullally. At a recent press tour, Mullally answered questions about what she has coming up by saying, “I will be doing the Party Down movie. John [Enbom] is writing it right now.” That’s not exactly new news in itself, we already knew that work was being done on the script; but some of Mullally’s other comments make things sound further along than the last time this project was talked about. First off, Mullally knows some details about where her character is going. She added, “I think we’re going to see Lydia’s ex-husband – Ed I think is name (sic) – who was really racist and a misogynist.” Also, it sounds like financing for the film is all taken care of. Before Enbom started work writing the script proper, Mullally says that he turned in an outline to investors that was “enthusiastically approved.”

Things are starting to look up for screenwriter Michael Dillberti. Not only did his screenplay 30 Minutes or Less get made into a pretty high profile comedy last year, but another one of his scripts, Little White Corvette, made it onto this year’s Black List. The list’s description of the movie reads as follows: “A down and out brother and sister go to Miami to sell a duffel bag of cocaine that they found in the trunk of a corvette left them by their dead father.” Sounds like it has some potential, especially when you factor in that the script already has Emma Stone attached to star. She’s had a year even better than Dillberti’s, starring in the wildly successful The Help and just finishing shooting on superhero tentpole picture The Amazing Spider-Man, and apparently she’s been interested in doing something with Little White Corvette for quite a while now.

Last year’s lady-centric comedy Bridesmaids cost Universal $32 million to produce and ended up banking over $288m at the box office. Plus it made viable, hit anchoring stars out of both Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. So, would you imagine that the studio wants to make a sequel? The answer is yes, yes they do, very much, but unfortunately they have a huge stumbling block in front of them. According to a report from THR, the original film’s co-writer and star, Kristen Wiig ,isn’t interested in doing another one. When asked about the potential sequel, that should definitely be once again written by Wiig and her collaborator Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, Wiig replied, “We aren’t working on that. Annie and I aren’t planning a sequel. We are writing something else.” Oh. Ouch. That sucks for Universal. THR’s speculation over why Wiig refuses to play ball centers on the minuscule $100 thousand bonuses the cast got on the first one, after it became a runaway financial success, but Wiig refused to comment on whether her reluctance to work on another Bridesmaids is financially motivated or not. She also might not want to start doing comedy sequels because she’s trying to move her career in a more dramatic direction. She’s got upcoming dramatic roles opposite people like Annette Bening in Imogene and Robert De Niro in The Comedian. That sounds like a potential springboard into Oscar territory to me. Doing something as lame as a “getting the band back [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

UPDATED: Looks like this baby is still called Black Sands. One of TheArnoldFans sent us this – “SORRY…Okay, it looks like we are back to the film title ‘Black Sands!’ An Arnold rep contacted us and explained there must have been a translation problem from Google translator on the title. The original source, written by one of Arnold’s close Austrian friends, either accidentally wrote ‘Black Sunday’ or the translation to English was off. Either way, it  sounds like the plot remains equally as exciting with Arnold as an angel! Production start date: April!” We still haven’t seen any finished products from the newly out-of-retirement Arnold Schwarzenegger hit the theaters. But with his first project back in the acting world, Last Stand, done shooting, and the first trailer for Stallone’s upcoming Expendables sequel (where Arnie reportedly has a meatier role) having come and gone, all that will soon be remedied. Now that the action legend has his first round of comeback movies in the can, what’s next on his schedule? According to fan site The Arnold Fans, it’s going to be a movie called Black Sunday, which was previously being developed under the title Black Sands. Reportedly the film is about an immortal character who is in a war against a group of evil arms dealers. When asked details about the project, Schwarzenegger replied, “I’m a kind of angel,” but stopped short by adding, “I can not currently say more about this film.” His lawyers have trained him well. While I’m [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

There’s a spy comedy in the works over at Disney called The B Team that’s starting to see some life. The film is reportedly about a James Bond-type secret agent who gets himself kidnapped, leaving his nerdy tech support and research team left with the responsibility of rescuing him. Hilarity will doubtless follow as the pudgy, dweeby types try to acclimate themselves to being out in the world doing stuff instead of sitting behind a computer screen, typing things and coloring missions with snarky commentary. The new action regarding the film’s development is that Seth Rogen has been brought on as a producer, which means he’s likely also being looked at to star. This has been Rogen’s modus operandi of late. He’s had a producing hand in a lot of his recent films, including 50/50, The Green Hornet, and Pineapple Express. I guess he’s kind of like the Jay-Z of the comedy world.

Leonardo DiCaprio and his production outfit Appian Way have been sitting on the rights to the novel The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America for quite a while, with intents to eventually get it made with DiCaprio himself starring as the main character Dr. H.H. Holmes. Holmes was a serial killer from the late 1800s, a twisted freak who built a murderous funhouse of a hotel that contained a gas chamber, a crematorium, and a dissection table… amongst other things, which led to him capturing and murdering anywhere between thirty to a couple hundred people during the Chicago World’s Fair. There’s movement on the project now, as DiCaprio and his people have sold the rights to Warner Bros. and are going to team up with the studio to produce. The first step to actually making a movie is to get a script, so to that end Warners has hired Graham Moore to do an adaptation. You might recognize Moore’s name, because he recently made some waves when his script The Imitation Game was named at the top of the 2011 Black List. And in addition to being a hot screenwriter, he’s also a native Chicagoan, which makes him kind of perfect for this project.