The Morning News Bulletin is your daily roundup of film news that happened over the last couple of hours while we were fast asleep over here in SA with the Monday bulletin including any major news that occurred over the weekend. In today's news headline's Leonardo Di Caprio is set to star in a new JFK conspiracy movie, Howard Shore will compose the score for the two Hobbit films and The Dark Knight Rises will start production in May 2011. Details on these and more after the jump.
According to Deadline Hollywood, Leonardo Di Caprio will star as the slain US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) in a new film which will deal specifically with a certain conspiracy theory surrounding his death. The film will be based on the yet to be published non-fiction book Legacy Of Secrecy by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann and it will be co-produced by Di Caprio's production company, Appian Way, and Warner Brothers Studios for a 2013 release date which will be exactly 50 years after the assassination. There are many theories about the assassination of JFK which range from the plausible to the truly bizarre with this film set to fall somewhere between the two extremes. The article in Deadline also states that Leo is now actively searching for a big name director to helm the picture. Here's to hoping for another Di Caprio and Scorsese team up!
Howard Shore, the master composer behind the score for The Lord Of The Rings (LOTR) trilogy, has all but confirmed that he will return to score the upcoming Hobbit movies (The Hobbit will be split into two movies a.l.a Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows). In an interview with The Province he said:
"We've talked about making these movies for many years, at least since 2002,"
"It looks like finally it's going to be happening. I'll be working on it for the next three years -- it's going to consume a lot of my time and work now."
This is simply confirmation of something that I have always suspected was going to happen. After his epic Academy Award winning work in the LOTR trilogy there was absolutely no chance that director Peter Jackson would want anyone else provide the music for his return to Middle Earth.
In an interview with Empire, Sir Michael Caine has said that production on The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) will begin in may next year and end in November with a view to releasing the movie in July the following year. The Nolan Brothers, Christopher and Jonathan, are currently hard at work finishing up the script which is due to be completed in January next year. Expect more news from us on TDKR as they crop up on the interwebs.
Apart from the latest Harry Potter film, a new Russel Crowe film, The Next Three Days was released in US theatres over the weekend and it seems that Mr. Crowe has hit a rut in terms of his bankability. According to the LA Times the thriller which is written and directed by Paul Haggis (Crash) opened to an estimated $6.75 million during the weekend. This is one of the worst starts for any film in nationwide release in the US this year and the lowest opening for a picture starring Crowe since the 2006 failure A Good Year. Crowe's films have not been bringing home much bacon lately. This year's Robin Hood and last year's State of Play and 2008's Body of Lies all disappointed. But, The LA Times article also mentions that an overwhelming 83% of audience member's were over 25 and most seemed to like The Next Three Days, giving it an average grade of B+, according to market research firm CinemaScore. Good word of mouth could lead to a slow decline in ticket sales in the coming weeks, but the film is still unlikely to gross more than $25 million, a weak result given that it cost about $35 million to produce and nearly $30 million to advertise. I'm guessing movie studios won't be falling over themselves to hire him in their next blockbusters anytime soon.
I'm sure a few of you remember not too fondly a certain film from many years back called Judge Dredd which starred Sylvester Stallone. Judging by it's 15% Rotten Score on movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, hardly anyone enjoyed it but that hasn't stopped Lionsgate from rebooting the film, now simply named Dredd, with Karl Urban in the title role. The only reason this news is of any interest to us is due to the fact that the project is currently shooting in Cape Town as we speak at the newly completed multi-million rand Cape Town Film Studios. Check out the film's synopsis as well as a first look at Karl Urban in character thanks to Slashfilm:
Dredd takes us to the wild streets of Mega City One, the lone oasis of quasi-civilization on Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the most feared of elite Street Judges, with the power to enforce the law, sentence offenders and execute them on the spot – if necessary. The endlessly inventive mind of writer Alex Garland and the frenetic vision of director Peter Travis bring Dredd to life as a futuristic neo-noir action film that returns the celebrated character to the dark, visceral incarnation from John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s revered comic strip.
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Last night I had the pleasure and the privilege of attending the first South African screening of Ben Affleck's new movie, The Town, with Barry Ronge in attendance at NuMetro Hyde Park. The movie is only being released locallyon December 31 so you will get a review closer to the time but in the meanwhile you can take a look at the trailer and see if it excites you as much as it excited me:
This is without a doubt one of the must-see movies of the summer and, along with Toy Story 3, Inception and The Social Network, is one of the best movies of 2010 so far.
That brings to an end today's edition of the Morning News Bulletin. See you again tomorrow morning for another roundup of film news headlines.
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