24 Movie Almost Has a Script, and 5 Other Stories You'll be talking About Today
Happy Tuesday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Warner Bros. wants a Leonardo DiCaprio franchise... David Cronenberg has The Fly and Eastern Promises sequels on the brain... Fox fires back at those litigious Black Swan interns... Are you ready for some football nonsensical racist celebrity spewage?... and more.
· Good-ish news for Jack Bauer fans hungrily awaiting the rumored big-screen adaptation of 24 to the big screen: Kiefer Sutherland says there's a script! Almost! Sort of? "We are coming very close to having a finished script. That's been the most difficult thing. You have to remember that we have 24 hours to explain the stories in 24 and so trying to condense that into a two-hour film version has been a real shift in gear for us. We were originally trying to make it too big and put too much into it - but once we relaxed, we found out how to tell that story. So yes, we definitely do plan on making the film." Believe it when you see it, but hey. FYI. [The Telegraph]
· Speaking of Hollywood glaciers, let's see how quickly -- if at all -- Warner Bros. can turn around Satori, the Don Winslow best-seller it has acquired as a possible franchise for Leonardo DiCaprio. The actor, whose production company is involved with development (the initial project has a script forthcoming from Winslow and Shane Salerno), would play "a Westerner, raised in Japan and taught an assassin's skills, who gets caught up in the chaos of post-WWII as the U.S., Soviet Union, France and China maneuver for power in Southeast Asia in the early 1950s." And apparently he's good at... board games. Seriously. [Deadline]
· How about a run through David Cronenberg's pending IMDB profile, including ayes on those rumored The Fly and Eastern Promises follow-ups and a nay on Timecrimes? And Cosmopolis, about which Cronenberg declaimed: "Most of the movie takes place inside a limo, so some people would say that's not cinematic, but I say it is!" Allllll I needed to hear. [Shock Till Ya Drop]
· Fox is officially passing the buck to Darren Aronofsky and Co. in the Case of the Sue-Happy Black Swan Interns: "These interns were not even retained by Fox Searchlight and, in fact, were working for the production company that made Black Swan well before Fox Searchlight even acquired its rights in the film." [Deadline]
· Simon Cowell and his high-stakes talent-search gamble The X Factor are not failures, says Simon Cowell. [AP]
· It took an unfortunate, utterly irrational comparison between Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler to make it happen, but we finally, finally got a Monday Night Football broadcast minus the hoary old Hank Williams Jr. theme song. ESPN pulled it after the country star's ridiculous comments on Fox and Friends, which you'll find below. Also: OMG that Eric Foster injury. If that was a dislocated right ankle, then I have totally misunderstood the way bones work all these years. [NFL.com]
Comments
"You have to remember that we have 24 hours to explain the stories in 24 and so trying to condense that into a two-hour film version has been a real shift in gear for us."
Hey, Keifer? You know those episodes from roughly hour 12-20? Where you guys are clearly grasping at straws and introducing stories involving, say, amnesia and mountain lions and random heists? I'm no expert, but maybe start cutting those.
I'm SO excited about 24: The Movie!! Or - more accurately - 2: The Movie.