Legendary film producer Dino De Laurentiis says he is updating one of his classics, Barbarella. He produced the 1968 original, starring Jane Fonda.De Laurentiis is quick to say the new film is “not a remake of ‘Barbarella’” but “a completely new ‘Barbarella.’” He added that the new film will have “love, sex, adventure.” De Laurentiis said that the script is being worked on now, but no one has been selected to play the title role yet.
Columbia Pictures has begun negotiating with Spider-Man writer David Koepp to write the script for a fourth installment of the franchise, Variety reported. Koepp, who most recently wrote the draft of a fourth Indiana Jones movie that got George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford to reteam for Paramount, wrote the original 2002 Spidey film that launched the studio’s most lucrative franchise. Alvin Sargent wrote the second and third installments; all the films in the Marvel Comics franchise were directed by Sam Raimi. Spider-Man 3 opens on May 4, with Thomas Haden Church playing Sandman and Topher Grace as Venom. Laura Ziskin produces with Avi Arad and Grant Curtis.
If a fourth Spider-Man movie is to be made, new deals will have to be struck with stars Tobey Maguire, Kirstin Dunst and James Franco, along with Raimi if he decides to return to direct a fourth film. The studio would release the sequel in 2009 or 2010.
Al Gough, who is co-writing the third installment in the Mummy film franchise with partner Miles Millar, told SCI FI Wire that the sequel will unwrap a new mummy and feature a character who is the grown son of Rick and Evie (played in the previous films by Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz). It’s aiming to shoot this summer under director Rob Cohen (Stealth) for a 2008 release.
Gough and Millar, who also created The CW’s Smallville, said the sequel will also have a new concept. “Stephen Sommers [who wrote and directed the previous two films] and his partner, Bob Ducsay, . . . approached us and said, ‘Steve doesn’t want to write the third movie. Would you guys be interested?’” Gough said in an interview. “And we were like, ‘Well, it’s a third.’ But then they had a concept for it that we really liked. They had an idea for the movie, which is something we always wanted to do. So we’re like, ‘Well, if we don’t do it, they’re going to do it in this movie.’”
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Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow has joined the cast of Iron Man, a Marvel Comics superhero movie starring Robert Downey Jr. Downey plays the armor-clad title character and his alter ego, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark. Terrence Howard will play Stark’s best friend Rhodey. Paltrow will play Stark’s personal assistant Virginia “Pepper” Potts, one of the few people in Stark’s life who can go toe-to-toe with him and who occasionally serves as his conscience. The pair also share a secret attraction to each other.
“Her representatives let us know that she wanted to do a movie like this,” said Kevin Feige, Marvel’s president of production. “A few phone calls later from all parties involved, and over the weekend it happened.” Jon Favreau is directing the movie, which will be distributed by Paramount Pictures. Production is scheduled to begin in March in Los Angeles. Paltrow, who won an Oscar for her work in “Shakespeare in Love,” most recently appeared in “Running With Scissors.”
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Terence Stamp are set to join Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in “Get Smart.” Shooting begins next month on the Peter Segal-directed comedy for Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures. While the comedy is based on the 1965 Mel Brooks/Buck Henry-created sitcom, the Rock will play the newly created character Agent 23. Stamp will play an evil leader. Tom Astle and Matt Ember wrote the script. Andrew Lazar, Charles Roven and Alex Gartner are producing the pic, which is a co-production between Mosaic Media Group, Mad Chance and Callahan Filmworks.
Get Smart will shoot in L.A., D.C. and Moscow, starting February 3 and wrapping in July. Segal said the premise has been contemporized, but they have managed to retain such sitcom touchstones as the “cone of silence,” the shoe phone and the original cars driven by Smart. “What made the original unique was it took place in the Cold War era and skewered the political landscape,” Segal said. “We’re trying to embrace that spirit, and there is certainly a lot to skewer politically today.”
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Ed Bass, one of the producers behind Bobby, and Karen Sharpe Kramer, the widow of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World director Stanley Kramer, have teamed to make a sequel to the comedy classic, says The Hollywood Reporter. Titled It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD World, the film would be, like the 1963 film, a large ensemble movie mixing comics and dramatic actors. The story follows the descendants of the characters from the first movie who are thrust into another madcap chase to find a cache of money after it is revealed that the money found in the first movie was counterfeit.
Bass’ relationship with the sequel began in 1991 when he produced the “Mad World” documentary Something a Little Less Serious with Stanley Kramer. The two began planning a sequel, but Kramer became ill, and the project was put on hold. Kramer died in 2001. No director is attached, and Bass and Kramer plan to finance the film independently. The duo want the sequel to be have an even bigger cast than the original, and they hope to involve actors from the original movie.
Buena Vista Pictures has confirmed that the National Treasure sequel will be titled National Treasure: The Book of Secrets. The subtitle refers to the 18 pages which are actually missing from John Wilkes Booth’s library. The sequel also is said to involve Abraham Lincoln. Jon Turteltaub directs and Jerry Bruckheimer executive produces again. “The Book of Secrets” is expected to star Nicolas Cage, Justin Bartha, Diane Kruger, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel. It is targeted for a December 21, 2007 release.
Variety reports that Steve Alten’s prehistoric shark story Meg may finally move forward in 2007. Like many would-be tentpoles, the movie fell victim to escalating costs as well as New Line’s focus on other pricey pics, says the trade about the delays. New Line picked up the rights last year and put the film on the fast track for a 2006 release. At the time, it was hoping to make Meg for $75 million, with a significant chunk financed by selling off foreign distribution rights. But when the estimated budget came in much higher - some put the figure at $150 million, mostly due to costly f/x - New Line began scaling back. Now, Meg is looking to shoot this spring for a summer 2008 release, at the earliest.
“I have no doubt Meg will swim,” says director Jan de Bont. Alten, meanwhile, says he won’t begin the book “Meg 4: Hell’s Aquarium” until the movie is greenlit. “I need the movie to generate publicity for that book,” he says.