"lovelies! Chaz is Being Viciously Attacked on Blogs & Message boards about being on DWTS!This is Still America right ? It took guts 2 do it. Can u guys check out sites & give him your support? BTW ...Mothers don't stop Getting angry with stupid bigots who fk with their children!" Now you know. [@cher via WSJ, AP]
Remember that folk music movie Joel and Ethan Coen were working on back in June? It has co-financing and a title. Variety reports that StudioCanal will co-finance the film, now titled Inside Llewyn Davis, with Scott Rudin set to produce. The film -- which will reportedly feature "live music" -- is inspired, in part, by the life of famed musician Dave Van Ronk, an important figure in the growth of the folk music scene in New York's Greenwich Village in the 1960s. [Variety]
An update in the curious saga of that one time Matthew Fox allegedly got too drunk while in Cleveland (where he's filming I, Alex Cross with Tyler Perry) and punched a party bus driver in the... well, he allegedly punched her in multiple parts of the body. Let's leave it at that. The 29-year-old woman has now officially filed assault charges against the actor, who was not arrested by police following the Sunday night incident. (Incidentally, Fox plays a mob killer opposite Perry's titular hero in Alex Cross.) Developing... [CNN]
Sad news, theater fans: James Franco will not be making his Broadway debut this fall in David Cromer's production of the Tennessee Williams drama Sweet Bird of Youth. Monday, the actor's publicist confirmed that Franco was no longer attached to the play, where he was set to star as the gigolo paramour to Nicole Kidman's voracious movie star. As of now, Cromer is not sure if or when the Scott Rudin-produced Sweet Bird will take the stage. [NYT/ArtsBeat]
One of the more mysterious curios of the fall movie season is Angelina Jolie's directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey. In an interview with Vanity Fair (on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles this week), Jolie says that she wrote the script for the Bosnian War-set romance while she was ill and quarantined from her children. "I don't watch TV and I wasn't reading anything. So I started writing. I went from the beginning to the end. I didn't know any other way." Afterward, she passed the draft to Brad Pitt; what did her super-famous husband think? "He called and said, 'You know, honey, it's not that bad.'" Oh. Maybe leave that one off the poster. [VF.com]
Maria Maggenti, who wrote the Selena Gomez luxury binge fantasia Monte Carlo, is your Dirty Dancing remake scribe! Since Monte Carlo, Maggenti has written an adaptation of Before I Fall and is wrapping up work on the multi-century romance My Name Is Memory. Hopefully this means we're in for a decadent, Disney-pop trip to the Catskills and a scene about Penny's abortion to set Gomez's empowerment anthem "Who Says?" [Deadline]
Cue up some New Order! Academy Award winner Sofia Coppola and Phoenix lead singer Thomas Mars were married in Bernalda, Italy over the weekend. "Everything went well," Bernalda Mayor and ceremony officiator Leonardo Chiruzzi told the AP. "It was simple, calm, in the garden." Guests at the wedding -- which took place at the at the Coppola family-owned mansion Palazzo Margherita in Bernalda -- reportedly included George Lucas, Johnny Depp, Talia Shire, Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman. Local meats and cheeses were served, but whether gnocchi was on the menu remains to be seen. [LAT/Ministry of Gossip]
Bad news usually breaks late on a Friday, which makes it decidedly bizarre that this great news broke at 10:30 p.m. on the East Coast: Deadline reports that Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to star in the William Monahan-scripted remake of The Gambler, with Martin Scorsese attached to direct. (The three men previous teamed up for The Departed) The 1974 version of The Gambler -- based on a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- followed a New York City school teacher (James Caan) who is addicted to gambling. No word yet when this will actually film, however, since both Scorsese and DiCaprio have full dance cards for the foreseeable future. [Deadline]
"I accidentally got on Twitter because there was a fake Elizabeth Banks, twittering, and David Wain, who's the director of Role Models and a good friend of mine, was staying at my house in L.A., twittering. I didn't know anything about Twitter at the time, but he was following me, thinking it was me. And this person tweeted, 'Hanging out by my pool! Just chilling on Saturday!' And David Wain was actually hanging out by my pool, on Saturday, and I wasn't there. I was in New York or something. And so he was like, 'Huh, I don't think you're Elizabeth Banks.' And this person broke down, and said, 'No I'm not Elizabeth Banks. I started this because I'm a fan and now I have all these followers and I don't know what to do.' David called me and said, 'Do you want me to broker the password away from this guy and get your identity back on Twitter?' And he did! So, yeah: I got Twitter identity theft." Now you know. [Esquire]
Because Hollywood never met a property it didn't want to resuscitate, Sony has commissioned Source Code screenwriter Ben Ripley to pen its remake of Flatliners. The Joel Schumacher-directed 1990 film starred Julia Roberts (and her awesome hair), Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland and Billy Baldwin as medical students toying with near-death experiences to increasingly dangerous outcomes. Sorta like movie executives continuing to mine former VHS faves for redux treatment! [Deadline]
The Internet collectively recoiled when the video of Jim Carrey professing his undying love for Emma Stone was released by the Ace Ventura star, but don't worry -- it was all a joke! Except for the joke part. "Yes, my msg to Emma Stone was a comedy routine," Carrey wrote on Twitter, "and the funniest part is that everything i said is tru." Lolz? He continued: "People often ask me if i'm being funny or serious. The answer is 'YES.' ?;^]" Glad that's cleared up. >:'P* [@JimCarrey]
"I do like the Fox series [...], but I'd resisted the idea of the concert film. It just seemed an inherently thin idea. And when compared with some of the greats, say Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz on the Band, exceptional for both its music and its insight, it is. But a hallmark of the show, in addition to some of the best musical mash-ups ever, is its celebration of differences, an ode to the outsiders that pack high school hallways. Those kids get an almost equal voice here. [...] Glee represents validation, as significant as the enjoyment to be had from all those show-stopping Broadway-styled productions. So if you're feeling down, and troubled, and you need a helping hand..." Yeah, actually, I do. Can the Glee movie run to Home Depot and get me some batteries? [LAT]
Get your tastebuds ready for the ultimate Wahlberg fan culinary experience; famous brothers Mark and Donnie, along with their chef sibling Paul, have secured trademark rights to sell "Wahlburgers" at a new Boston-area burger joint called, what else? Wahlburgers. I'll take mine with a side of NKOTBBQ sauce and Funky Bunch fries! But wait, there's more -- next year the brothers will open a pizza place as well. Drop your Wahlberg-related pizzeria name suggestions below. [Boston Globe via E! Online]
Magazine editors are increasingly looking to place their stories at studios -- for what it's worth: "'Hollywood is essentially in the business of not making movies,' said Henry Finder, editorial director of The New Yorker. 'They only make a movie when they run out of reasons not to make it. [... B]ut if I'm trying to get talent attached it might be easier for me to say, "Hey look, Brad Pitt, there's this really cool story that was in Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone" -- it's going to be based on that.'" Great! It beats Ouija. [WWD via The Awl]
Spoiler alert: the apes of San Francisco rise up at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and put the human race on a collision course for extinction. If this scenario were to really happen, though, it wouldn't likely start by the bay. BrowBeat contacted San Francisco zoo officials and the United States Department of Agriculture and found that only 25 apes currently reside in the Bay Area, meaning an ape uprising would likely be better contained than what's presented in the late-summer blockbuster. Phew. Dodged a bullet there, humanity. [Slate/BrowBeat]
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