There's always interesting news to come out of the annual Cannes Film Festival. LA-based British filmmaker Trevor Miller is taking on a contemporary film noir project set to a soundtrack of covers by L.A. bands of legendary British group The Smiths. It follows a surveillance contractor who drifts through Los Angeles at night photographing "cheating couples," falls for a jilted wife and unwittingly photographs her husband burying the body of dead girl in the high desert.
In other Cannes news, The crime/action movie The Gunman, starring Sean Penn, is lining up U.S. and international deals. The screenplay by director Peter Travis is an adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's 1981 novel The Prone Gunman and centers on an international contract killer betrayed by the organization he works for.
Anna Paquin is taking on the true story crime drama Free Ride, which will be the directorial and screenwriting debut for Shana Betz, whose own past was the inspiration for the film. The story follows Paquin as the mother of two daughters who tries to find a better life in Florida in the 1970s but is soon pulled into the dangerous drug trade business.
This year, the movie news coming out of Cannes may well have been upstaged by this.
Lights Out star Holt McCallany has booked a starring role opposite Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis in the untitled cyber terrorism thriller being directed by Michael Mann. McCallany will play a street-smart U.S. Marshal charged with the custody of Hemsworth’s character.
Hailee Steinfeld has joined Sam Worthington in the cast of For The Dogs, the Phillip Noyce-directed film based on a novel by Paul Leyden. The story follows a solitary assassin (Worthington) who agrees to help a precocious teenager (Steinfeld) exact revenge on those who murdered her parents and younger brother.
Reese Witherspoon has joined stars Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson and Benicio del Toro in Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of the novel Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon.
The film adaptation of the TV series The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington in the title role, has signed its villain, actor Marton Csokas (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Lord of the Rings).
The producers of James Bond have finally settled on Christopher Nolan to direct the next film in the franchise.
TV
The crime drama Criminal Justice, written by Richard Price, directed by Oscar winner Steven Zaillian, and starring James Gandolfini, has been ordered by HBO as a seven-part limited series. The show is set in New York and loosely inspired by the acclaimed 2008 BBC series of the same name created by Peter Moffat.
CBS has officially picked up the spy pilot Intelligence to series. The show stars Josh Holloway (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and Marg Helgenberger who called it, "James Bond meets Frankenstein meets Mission: Impossble."
ABC may have decided to cancel Body of Proof, but that may not be the end of the show. TNT, USA and WGN America are all showing some degree of interest in picking up the forensic/police procedural starring Dana Delany. It's a bit of a puzzle as to why ABC dropped it, anyway, considering its ratings were on the uptick, and it ranked as the third-most-watched ABC drama this season, behind only Castle and Grey’s Anatomy.
The UK's Channel 4 announced a new an eight-part series titled Shameless set in a "crumbling Victorian cop shop on the wrong side of Manchester." Creator Paul Abbott calls it a "jet black" comedy drama that promises to be a police procedural with a difference.
Fox released a trailer for the J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman show Almost Human, a futuristic buddy cop drama set a few decades into the future when cops are partnered with humanoid robots.
NBC unveiled a trailer for its new police drama Ironside, a remake of the Raymond Burr series, with the reboot featuring Blair Underwood in the role of the wheelchair detective, as well as the new James Spader spy series, The Blacklist. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
Amazon has landed streaming rights to NBC Universal shows, including Grimm, Covert Affairs, Hannibal, and Warehouse 13.
The USA Network announced its scripted drama projects last week, including the political/financial thriller The Edge; Bank, about a young FBI agent who works in the bank crimes division in Los Angeles; Blanco County, based on a series of mysteries by Ben Rehder; and Shadow Counsel, a legal thriller about a former Army JAG attorney now working as a criminal lawyer in NY who's recruited by the FBI to crack an ongoing investigation. (Hat tip to Omnimystery News.)
Confused about what made the fall schedule and what didn't? The Hollywood Reporter has the full schedule at a glance, as well as trailers for new shows on the CW Network; NBC; Fox; ABC; and CBS.
Comments