Here is today’s batch of newsbite goodness.
1. Cindy Bond, the president and COO of Promenade Pictures, has co-founded a new company called Mission Pictures — but she is still involved with Promenade, and both companies will now be involved in producing Noah’s Ark: The New Beginning, the computer-animated follow-up to Promenade’s previous effort The Ten Commandments (2007). — Variety, Hollywood Reporter
2. Marvel Studios has hired Joe Johnston — who was a special-effects whiz at Lucasfilm before he turned to directing films like The Rocketeer (1991), Jumanji (1995), October Sky (1999) and Jurassic Park III (2001) — to direct The First Avenger: Captain America. Now they just need a script. — Hollywood Reporter
3. MGM is set to join the handful of distributors who are posting legitimate film clips — and entire movies — online via sites like YouTube. — New York Times, Reuters
4. Mongol director Sergei Bodrov will direct The Silk Road: The Adventures of Marco Polo, an epic told through the eyes of Polo’s prison mate, Rustichello da Pisa. — Variety, Hollywood Reporter
5. Edgar Ramirez will play 1970s terrorist Carlos the Jackal in Olivier Assayas’s Ilich: Story of Carlos. Carlos was a significant figure in Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity and at least one of its sequels, and he was played by Yorgo Voyagis (who played Joseph in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth) in the 1988 mini-series based on Ludlum’s novel, but the recent movies starring Matt Damon have ignored the character entirely. Several other novels and movies have made use of the character, too. — Hollywood Reporter
6. Clark Hoyt ponders how secular newspapers ought to handle their coverage of art that handles religious themes in a controversial manner. Focusing primarily on the ten-year-old gay-Jesus play Corpus Christi, Hoyt notes that most outlets never get beyond defending an artist’s freedom-of-speech rights, but surely, he says, there are other matters to consider, too. — New York Times
7. As if it wasn’t bad enough that we have so many lame movies out there spoofing the latest Hollywood hits, we will soon have to deal with a lame movie that spoofs the spoofs. Or, even better, a lame movie about a moviemaker who makes a movie that spoofs the spoofs. Either way, the upcoming movie is called Not Another Not Another Movie. Seriously. — Hollywood Reporter
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In