Studio Briefing reports that Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua has racked up Disney’s best October opening ever bringing $29.3 million in tickets.
David Cronenberg is currently in talks with the MGM to direct The Matarese Circle, reports Variety, from a script penned by “3:10 to Yuma” writing duo, Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. Denzel Washington is attached to star in the film. Based on a Robert Ludlum novel, Matarese Circle is set during the period of Cold War. It tells the story of two conflicting secret agents who team up to bring down an international group of killers known as the Matarese. MGM reportedly are expecting to start Production in spring ’09
Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers are now scheduled to film at Raleigh Productions in Manhattan Beach, California reports Comicmix.com. The facility has 14 soundstages and 300,000 square feet of office and support space, making it perfect to mount the four films over the next three years given the shared personnel and even props and cast if all goes as anticipated. Louis D’Esposito, Marvel’s president of physical production, told Variety that Raleigh had been “incredibly accommodating in terms of financial structures”.
Ridley Scott recently talked to io9 about his big-screen adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Good to know he’s definitely going for it. Currently, the project is only in an early developmental stage, and a script is not quite ready yet, according to Scott. “No, no no we’re still struggling with that one. I have 40 things on the go at once. But that’s a very important one. And sometimes, some surface faster than the others. It’s partly luck of the draw,” he told io9.
Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway to Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton is directing for Disney, says The Hollywood Reporter. The movie, which stars Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, will use a combination of live action and performance-capture technology to tell the Lewis Carroll story. Hathaway is playing the White Queen, a benevolent monarch who is deposed and banished by her sister, the Red Queen (Carter), who has an affinity for crying out, “Off with their heads!” The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch. Richard Zanuck, Joe Roth and Jennifer and Suzanne Todd are producing.
The Daily Mail in the Uk is reporting that Johnny Depp is being paid $56 million to reprise his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean 4. The payout will reportedly makes him the highest paid actor in history (for an upfront fee). The same article says that Disney are likely not to ask Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom to return for the fourth outing, thus making Pirates 4 a Jack Sparrow spin-off. The first three Pirates Of The Caribbean films earned over $2.6 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
Sources:
IMDB
Variety
Comicmix.com
THR
The Daily Mail
Io9
Studio Briefing