Here are some quick updates on some of today’s smaller bits of movie news…
Red, the Bruce Willis comic book movie about a retired black ops agent who becomes the target of a high-tech goverment assassination attempt and must get his old low-tech posse back together to fight off the threat, has started filming. Alongide Bruce, the film will also star Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine, Julian McMahon, James Remar and Rebecca Pidgeon. It’s certainly quite a cast. Red is schedule for release on October 22nd, 2010. (Via: /Film)
Tatum O’Neal has signed up to star opposite Harry Lennix (Dollhouse) in Mr. Sophistication. In the film, Lennix plays a successful but self-destructive comedian who loses his celebrity status and then gets a last shot at stardom back in Los Angeles years later. O’Neal is the comic’s wife and business partner, who helps him beat his drug addiction. The film will mark writer/director Danny Green’s debut, having previously been a 2nd AD on the likes of Flight Of The Phoenix. (Source: THR)
Six weeks ago it was announced that Johnny Depp had agreed to star as the title character in the ridiculously titled Seven Friends of Pancho Villa and the Woman With Six Fingers. However with Depp’s packed schedule it didn’t seem likely the film would be made for a long time, but now Screen Daily reports that Palm D’Or winning director Emir Kusturica plans to start shooting the movie on February 15th, 2011. Now that’s some pre-planning. While he waits for Depp, Kustirica is planning to head to Israel to shoot a movie called Cool Water, about a male stripper who returns to his native Middle East to attend his father ‘s funeral. (Source: Screen Daily)
Hideo Nakata, director of the Japanese Ring movies, and the Hollywooed sequel, The Ring 2, will direct The Incite Mill, about 10 people hired for a job that pays $1200 an hour, but find themselves locked in an underground complex and forced to play a murderous game. The Japanese movie is scheduled to begin shooting in March. (Source: Variety)