Here’s out latest round-up of some of the smaller stories coming out of Hollywood…
The Nicolas Cage starrer, Drive Angry, is gearing up to shoot, and now news comes that Charlotte Ross has bagged a major role in the flick. The former NYPD actress will play a waitress who is seduced and then protected by Cage’s character. The Patrick Lussier directed film is about a man who is driven by rage and hellbent on finding the people who killed his daughter and kidnapped her baby. However the on-the-road pursuit spins out of control and gets increasingly bloody, leaving bodies strewn along the highway, while the police try and close in on him. (Source: THR)
Erin Cressida Wilson (Chloe, Secretary) has been hired to adapt Lisa See’s novel, Peony In Love, for Fox 2000. Tony and Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free, is producing the film, which revolves around a young woman who starves herself to death after falling in love with a man she fears she’ll never be allowed to wed. A large part of See’s book takes place after the young heroine has died, as she encounters a series of ghosts, who impart their own experiences of the opression facing women in 17th Century China. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, doesn’t it? (Source: Variety)
In more news of people developing miserable sounding movies, it’s been announced that a film is being put together based on Jennifer Thompson-Cannino’s memoir, Picking Cotton. The book recounts how Cannino was raped while in college and later identified 22-year-old Ronald Cotton as her attacker. However 11-years later he was freed when new DNA eveidence proved he couldn’t have done it. An unlikely friendship then developed between Cotton and the woman he’d been falsely convicted of raping, with the two working together to promote understanding of the flaws in the criminal justice system. Todd Komarknicki (Elf, Perfect Stranger) has been hired to write the script. (Source: Variety)
The company behind Coraline, Laika Entertainment, has a new film up its sleeve and they’ve got an Oscar-winning former Pixar director to help them create it. Jan Pinkava first rose to prominence making Geri’s Game at Pixar in 1997, winning the Academy Award for it. She also worked on Monster’s Inc, Toy Story 2 and A Bug’s Life. Now she’s teaming with Chris McCoy to write Little White Lie, which Laika is hoping to turn into an animated movie. Unfortunately though, there’s absolutely no word of the plot, other than that it stems from an original idea by Pinkava, who will also direct. (Source: THR)
A couple of weeks ago we reported that Taylor Lautner was attached to a script called Abduction, which was being shopped around to studios. Well now the bidding war has ended, and despite interest from the likes of Dreamworks, Lionsgate has nabbed the rights, with what was described as ‘the most agressive offer’ for Shawn Christensen’s screenplay.The price is said to be around the $1 million dollar mark, similar to Christensen’s last sale for Karma Coalition (which had no star attached), but very good for the currently sluggish spec script market. The film itself is about a teen (Lautner) who has long felt disconnected from his parents and figures out why (although the reason hasn’t been disclosed). This unleashes a chain of violent events and enters Bourne territory. (Source: Deadline Hollywood)