Mortal Kombat Officially Rebooted, and 5 Other Stories You'll Be Talking About Today
Happy Friday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Woody Harrelson may be next up for Now You See Me... The Half Nelson team gets Hate Mail... Idris Elba "would definitely consider" James Bond... The English Patient spawns a lawsuit... and more.
· New Line has officially declared its intention to reboot the Mortal Kombat series with Fame and Glee: The 3-D Concert Movie director Kevin Tancharoen, whose earlier Web episodes adapting the famously violent video game went viral earlier this year. The series' writer, Oren Uziel, got the scripting gig. And here's their Mileena! Ahem. [Deadline]
· Woody Harrelson is the latest actor to enter negotiations for the magician heist film Now You See Me, which would feature him as Merritt Osbourne, "a mentalist and hypnotist known for his Jedi-style mind tricks" -- as well as reunite him with his Zombieland co-star Jesse Eisenberg. [Variety]
· Filmmaking duo Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (Half Nelson, It's Kind of a Funny Story) have locked in Hate Mail as their next project. It's an ensemble piece about "several Manhattanites who encounter various iterations of hate mail and grapple with the subsequent fallout of their relationships." I'll totally volunteer to play the guy who drinks away the voices of Web trolls every night! Let's do it! [Variety]
· Idris Elba doesn't really want to be the first black James Bond, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't consider accepting the role if/when Sony ever offered it to him. Like, obviously. [THR]
· Saul Zaentz, the three-time Best Picture-winning producer, is suing Disney for allegedly holding out on money he says it owes him for the 1996 Oscar darling The English Patient. Of course, Disney sold the film's distributor Miramax last year, so this case should go to a judge and/or be resolved just about, oh, never. [Deadline]
· Michelle Obama went shopping at Target. Just thought you should know. [People]
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Comments
Have they driven you to the drink, Monsieur VanA? You must get offline for the weekend and dry out.
My spec script for Comment Section, an unlikely story of trollmance is on its way to my agent.
It's fine, but thanks! I'm sincerely OK with this arrangement if it means an opportunity to work alongside the Fleck/Boden braintrust. Or alongside you once you get Comment Section into development. Let me know!
Can I play myself in it?
Only if I can find that Total Recall head in an old Carolco warehouse somewhere, and if we can get Tyler Perry as Medea to play Mr. VanAirsdale. After all, there has to be some degree of verisimilitude, even in this, our po-po-mo universe 🙂
It's going to be like an inverse You've Got Mail, only with angry, sexually ambiguous Brooklyn-basement-ridden hipsters who have an attraction to one another in real life, but hate one another passionately online... actually, this is starting to sound pretty viable... I better halt this public pitch…
But, so, like right after their first kiss, one of them mutters a phrase that gives away his comment section identity and the film takes an "arts-ploitation" turn into violent depravity.
After the body of his unrequited true love/hated online enemy is buried, he returns to his daily routine only to find that someone else is posting opposing comments under the same name! This is called the Christopher turn-Pike!
Da-da-duh! Life is so like that, isn't it?
Dakota Fanning is played by the Olsen Twins trading off Full-House-style. Zoe Deschanel is played by Diablo Cody. Diablo Cody is played by Sean Penn in drag. And Ryan Gosling plays himself. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Happy weekend, everyone!
"...and Tyler Perry as Madea as S.T. VanAirsdale"
Pass the Kleenex. On second thought, no -- the toilet paper.
No, the baby wipes.