Tony Gilroy, who wrote the first three Jason Bourne films, will direct the fourth one, currently entitled The Bourne Legacy. Matt Damon has gone on the record saying that he wouldn't return for a fourth Bourne movie (or fifth, if you count Green Zone) without ex-Bourne director Paul Greengrass. And while Damon's stance has softened somewhat of late, the conventional wisdom around Hollywood is that the Bourne franchise won't reboot if faced with the challenge of recasting the title role. Risky for Universal? Sure. But there is precedent for this -- with shaken, not stirred, results.
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Every fall, like clockwork, a studio decides it's time for the season's definitive inspirational, feel-good type movie. You see, people really like inspirational, feel-good type movies! And judging from the genre's history, I can only assume, when trying to decide what feel-good topic to cover, the executives' conversations inevitably drift from underdog sports story to debilitating illness story to, eventually, someone saying, "So... how about a horse story?"
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Die Hard director John McTiernan (funny that no one is referring to him as "Last Action Hero director John McTiernan") was sentenced to a year in prison for not being completely honest with the authorities about his involvement in a wiretapping scandal. That got me to thinking: This is the guy who directed Predator and Die Hard! If anyone knows tricks on how to escape an impossible situation, it's him.
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It was another lousy weekend to be Renée Zellweger at the box office. Her gloriously trashy psychological thriller Case 39 plunged off Paramount's shelf to a demoralizing if predictable seventh-place opening -- the Oscar-winner's fourth consecutive wide-release disappointment in two and half years. Theories abound as to what went wrong when, but there's no reason to look back when the 41-year-old actress has a wide-open future in front of her. Or does she? It couldn't hurt follow Movieline's fail-safe career advice:
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Starting in 2012, Lucasfilm will be releasing one Star Wars film per year in 3-D. And right on cue, there's already an outcry over the fact that the first film will be The Phantom Menace. Oh, boo hoo. Look, I'm not a fan of the prequels, but those three films were absolutely made for 3-D -- so why not embrace the conversion? In anticipation, here are 12 scenes from the Star Wars saga that, if I didn't know better, were tailor-made to witness with a third dimension.
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This weekend, Gordon Gekko returns to theaters in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a prospect that a few years ago, you probably never thought would happen. If Gekko, really the epitome of 1980s culture, can come back for another adventure, why not some of other nostalgic favorites? Ahead, Movieline presents the five characters from the '80s that have yet to be resurrected, but really should. (Don't get your hopes up, Ferris Bueller fans: Your boy hero was already resurrected for an early 1990s television show.)
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With the news today that Tom Cruise and Madonna were originally considered to play the leads in Goodfellas, film fans the world over are once again left with that loaded question: What might have been? In the case of Goodfellas, a crappy movie -- can you imagine Cruise as coked-up Henry Hill? -- but what of other famous Hollywood near misses. Ahead, Movieline chronicles five of the biggest.
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Gasp! In what could only be described as predictable, Casey Affleck has admitted that the Joaquin Phoenix "documentary," I'm Still Here, is fake. The director spoke with the New York Times and confirmed that everything from Phoenix's appearance with David Letterman to the childhood home movies that are shown at the beginning of the film was planned, staged and carefully edited to create the most unsettling movie possible. Ahead Movieline dives into Affleck's confession and tries to parse out what he's really trying to say.
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Did you hear that sound? It was Jeremy Renner's phone ringing with yet another movie offer. In the span of a year, The Hurt Locker star has gone from being a somewhat recognizable character actor to an Oscar nominee with pick of the Hollywood litter. Good for him and all, but damn -- how many projects is Renner actually going to star in? Below, Movieline flips through Renner's increasingly marked up calendar and helps you figure it all out.
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Hollywood was in a precarious position in the months and years following Sept. 11, 2001: Completely ignore the event and a filmmaker might seem callous or, at the very least, out of touch. Center an entire film around the tragedy and that same filmmaker could be accused of being exploitative. The industry obviously had to respond, but it had to be done right. There's quite a difference between good filmmaking and a 9/11 reference only for the sake of tugging at already existing emotional strings (I'm talking to you, Remember Me). It's cheap. Though, some were done very well. We assembled a few examples of films over the last nine years which went about addressing those events of 2001 in a unique, thoughtful or poignant way.
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Greetings from Toronto! Movieline's Canadian HQ is up and running for this year's Toronto International Film Festival, that annual ritual of 300 films and just about as many brutally tough viewing decisions over the course of a week. (It helps that our fine, discriminating critics Stephanie Zacahrek and Michelle Orange are checking in soon as well.) But if festgoers have tough decisions, imagine being a distributor faced with dozens of buzzy titles and a checkbook to pick up only one or two. You've got to make it count -- and here's where they're likeliest to fight to the death to do so.
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Hollywood is giving Ronald Reagan's life the big-screen treatment with a just-announced film based on not one, but two biographies of the former president. A director has yet to be signed, but if this take is really going to depart from the 2003 mini-series The Reagans we need to think outside the box. And so, I propose five directors to take on The Gipper's life after the jump.
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After a summer of bloated action-comedies and comic-book adaptations, it's easy to forget that action movies used to be interesting. In the late '60s and early '70s mavericks like John Boorman and Jean Pierre-Melville made films that emphasized suspense and tension over set pieces. The protagonists were more emotionally complex, even though they barely spoke. And every punch, gunshot or car crash hurt.
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Fun fact about Mission: Impossible IV, the fourth film in the billion dollar Paramount franchise that Tom Cruise and the newly cast Jeremy Renner will lead into theaters in December of 2011: It won't be called Mission: Impossible IV. As Variety points out, the Brad Bird-directed film will be a reboot, which means a new title is needed -- one that might not even mention Mission: Impossible (like The Dark Knight didn't mention Batman). Ahead, Movieline offers Paramount 20 suggestions. You're welcome.
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"Television is the new movies," or at least that's what super-producer Irwin Winkler is banking on. As you found out earlier today, the Oscar-winner has signed a deal with Sony Pictures TV that will allow him to translate his films into series, starting with The Net. Which of his other films are right for the small screen, though? Ahead Movieline loads up his IMDb page and comes up with six fool-proof series pitches. Networks, pay attention.
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