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Monday, July 1, 2013

NEWS UPDATE: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Terminator 5, Jacob's Ladder, Mark Wahlberg

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"Django Unchained" co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx will reteam in an adaptation of the upcoming crime novel "Mean Business on North Ganson Street" written by S. Craig Zahler. The story focuses on two disgraced police detectives who are forced to put a stop to a spree of cop killings in a small Missouri town. The story apparently "starts off with a bang [with] a hardened detective (DiCaprio) who, after being told by a man that his beautiful wife is missing, tells him she is a hooker who obviously made off with his money. After the man commits a desperate tragic act right in the squad room, the disgraced detective is sent to a hellhole rust belt town called Victory, Missouri, where violent crime is skyrocketing. Partnered with an equally bad-assed detective who was demoted for publicly brutalizing a suspect (Foxx) [sic], the new partners get to do some real work. Police officers start showing up dead execution-style, and the cops think it might be open season on Victory’s police department."

terminator-sequel-news

A release date has been set for "Terminator 5". The sequel, which is a "rebooted Terminator movie" produced by Paramount, Annapurna Pictures and Skydance Productions, will be released on June 26, 2015. The script is written by Laeta Kalorgridis and Patrick Lussier ("Drive Angry") and will star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some rumors even speak of Dwayne Johnson possibly signing up for a part in the film. Here is the official press release:
"Skydance Productions, Annapurna Pictures and Paramount Pictures have jointly announced they will partner on a rebooted “TERMINATOR” movie, to be released by Paramount Pictures on June 26, 2015.

The first in a stand-alone trilogy, “TERMINATOR” will be produced by Megan Ellison of Annapurna and David Ellison of Skydance. Dana Goldberg and Paul Schwake of Skydance will serve as executive producers. Laeta Kalorgridis (“Avatar,” “Shutter Island”) and Patrick Lussier (“Drive Angry”) are attached to write the screenplay.

Launched in 1984 with star Arnold Schwarzenegger as the title character, “TERMINATOR” spanned 3 subsequent films, which have earned over $1 billion at the worldwide box office.

David Ellison most recently executive produced, along with his partners at Paramount, “World War Z,” “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”. A 5th installment of in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is in active development, along with a 3rd film in the “G.I. Joe” franchise, among other films.

Megan Ellison most recently produced the Academy Award®-nominated “Zero Dark Thirty,” “The Master” and executive produced “Spring Breakers” via her Annapurna Pictures banner and has David O. Russell’s “American Hustle,” Spike Jonze’s “Her,” and Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher” set for release later this year."

jacobs-ladder-remake
Here's some news that fits in the "Did we really need a remake for this ?" category. Apparently, a "Jacob's Ladder" remake is in the works. In case you haven't heard about it, the film is a 1990 cult classic directed by Adrian Lyne ("Fatal Attraction", "Unfaithful") about a Vietnam war veteran (played by Tim Robbins) who tries to put his life back together after the war, but is constantly tortured by nightmarish visions. It's one of those films that you really have to experience, because no synopsis can truly describe how disturbing this film is. "Jacob's Ladder" has served as a major influence on horror works in both cinema and videogames, most notably the "Silent Hill" franchise has been inspired by the film. Now, the remake is moving forward and producers claim that this will be more of an homage, rather than a direct retelling of the story. I'm not quite sure how that works. A first draft of the script was written by Jake Wade Well ("When a Stranger Calls") and recently Jeff Buhler ("The Midnight Meat Train") was hired to rewrite the script. We'll just have to wait and see how this one turns out.

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Mark Wahlberg will reunite with director Peter Berg after recently working together on the Navy SEAL thriller "Lone Survivor". Wahlberg will star in Berg's crime drama "American Desperado" , adapted from the book of the same name, which is based on a series of interviews between journalist and author Evan Wright ("Generation Kill") and criminal Jon Roberts, which was the focus of the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys". The script is penned by William Monahan ("The Departed"). Here is a synopsis for the book :
"In 2008 veteran journalist Evan Wright, acclaimed for his New York Times bestselling book Generation Kill and co-writer of the Emmy-winning HBO series it spawned, began a series of conversations with super-criminal Jon Roberts, star of the fabulously successful documentary Cocaine Cowboys. Those conversations would last three years, during which time Wright came to realize that Roberts was much more than the de-facto “transportation chief” of the Medellin Cartel during the 1980s, much more than a facilitator of a national drug epidemic. As Wright’s tape recorder whirred and Roberts unburdened himself of hundreds of jaw-dropping tales, it became clear that perhaps no one in history had broken so many laws with such willful abandon.

Roberts, in fact, seemed to be a prodigy of criminality – but one with a remarkable self-awareness and a fierce desire to protect his son from following the same path.

American Desperado is Roberts’ no-holds-barred account of being born into Mafia royalty, witnessing his first murder at the age of seven, becoming a hunter-assassin in Vietnam, returning to New York to become — at age 22 — one of the city’s leading nightclub impresarios, then journeying to Miami where in a few short years he would rise to become the Medellin Cartel’s most effective smuggler.

But that’s just half the tale.

The roster of Roberts’ friends and acquaintances reads like a Who’s Who of the latter half of the 20th century and includes everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Richard Pryor, and O.J. Simpson to Carlo Gambino, Meyer Lansky, and Manuel Noriega.

Nothing if not colorful, Roberts surrounded himself with beautiful women, drove his souped-up street car at a top speed of 180 miles per hour, shared his bed with a 200-pound cougar, and employed a 6”6” professional wrestler called “The Thing” as his bodyguard. Ultimately, Roberts became so powerful that he attracted the attention of the Republican Party’s leadership, was wooed by them, and even was co-opted by the CIA for which he carried out its secret agenda.

Scrupulously documented and relentlessly propulsive, this collaboration between a bloodhound journalist and one of the most audacious criminals ever is like no other crime book you’ve ever read. Jon Roberts may be the only criminal who changed the course of American history."



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