Time for a few more quickies.
1. Variety reports that Dennis Quaid and Ziyi Zhang will star in The Horsemen for director Jonas Åkerlund, from a script by David Callaham, whose only credit to date is for Doom (2005):
Quaid will play a bitter detective grieving over his wife’s recent death. While investigating a case, he discovers a shocking connection between himself and the suspects in a serial killing spree linked to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
2. Variety reports that Ewan McGregor will star in the futuristic British flick Franklyn for director Gerald McMorrow:
Pic is a split narrative set simultaneously in contemporary London and in a future metropolis ruled by religious fervor. It’s the story of four lost souls, divided by two parallel worlds, on course for an explosive collision when a single bullet will decide all their fates.
Production Weekly adds:
It’s the story of four lost souls, – Esser, Milo, Emillia, and Preest – divided by two parallel worlds, on course for a cataclysmic collision when a single bullet will decide all their fates.
Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City; a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervor. Esser is a broken man, searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of London’s homeless. Milo is a heartbroken thirty-something desperately trying to find a way back to purity of first love. Emilia is a beautiful art student, her suicidal art projects are becoming increasing more complex and deadly. Reality hasn’t got a prayer.
For some reason this film reminds me of Rex Mundi, although that film will be set in the past, rather than the future.
3. My hopes for Casino Royale — specifically, my hope that it will give us the harder-edged James Bond that Ian Fleming created half-a-century ago — just went up. The second-to-last track on the soundtrack album — whether the 25-track version listed at IGN.com or the 11-track version listed at Amazon.com — gets its title from the last words spoken by Bond in the original novel. And these are not words that I can imagine George Lazenby, Roger Moore, or even Pierce Brosnan uttering (though I could certainly imagine Sean Connery or Timothy Dalton speaking this line).
4. National Treasure (2004; my review) was good dumb fun — and while it may have been a rip-off of The Da Vinci Code on some level, it turned out to be a lot more fun than Ron Howard’s movie version of that book. Now, ComingSoon.net passes on this tidbit from MTV about the sequel, which starts shooting in January:
Discussing the flick’s script, Bruckheimer revealed, “It’s another little treasure hunt, and this time it involves [Abe] Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth and 18 pages which are actually missing from [Lincoln’s] diary.” Teasing the plot further, Bruckheimer posed the central question of the sequel. “What was in those 18 pages?”
5. Hoodwinked has now grossed over $100 million worldwide — with slightly less than half of that amount coming from overseas — and this makes director Cory Edwards very, very happy.
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