Gaiman’s American Gods Heads to TV

A television series based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel, American Gods, has been given the greenlight for Starz television. Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) and Michael Green (The River, Heroes) are writing the adaptation and, along with Gaiman, will serve as executive producers. Gaiman told Variety his emotions on the project were running the gamut:

“I am thrilled, ‎scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of ‘American Gods’ to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands. Now we finally move to the exciting business that fans have been doing for the last dozen years: casting our Shadow, our Wednesday, our Laura. 

Now that it’s a done deal, the real work begins:

Starz said series production would be begin once producers land their leading man for the role of  Shadow Moon in the saga about a war between traditional gods from mythology and contemporary, materialistic deities. Shadow Moon is an ex-con and bodyguard for Mr. Wednesday, an older god in the guise of a conman.

January Magazine’s review of American Gods is here. An interview with Gaiman from the same time period is here.

Ellen to Produce Naomi Novik Novel

Ellen DeGeneres is known for many things, but her foray into feature filmmaking is quite new. Still the comedienne and television host is known for successful entertainment undertakings and there’s no reason to think her latest project won’t be a winner.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. “won a heated bidding war for the movie rights to Uprooted, the new fantasy novel from Hugo Award-nominated Naomi Novik, the author behind the dragon-laced Temeraire books.”

DeGeneres will produce with Jeff Kleeman, her partner at A Very Good Production. Apparently, it was Kleeman who “identified the book and brought it to DeGeneres.”

Uprooted (Del Rey) was released on May 21, “Novik taps into her Polish roots to tell a YA story with tendrils in fairy and folk tales.”

The plot centers on a young woman named Agnieszka, who lives near the border of an evil wood, with only a wizard named Dragon who seems to keep the danger at bay. The price for the man’s protection is that a woman from the village is sent to serve him for 10 years, and to everyone’s surprise, the rather plain Agnieszka is selected. Thus the adventurous journey begins.

You can see the full piece here.

The End of the Tour: Looking Back on David Foster Wallace

Back in 2010, I loved brilliant David Lipsky’s heartbreaking and intimate book based on the time he spent with David Foster Wallace near the end of the tour for Infinite Jest, the book that would make the young writer’s career.

It was 1996. Lipsky was on assignment for Rolling Stone. Wallace was in the process of becoming the next-big-thing. As Lipsky wrote:

I’m thirty years old, he’s thirty-four. We both have long hair .... this book runs from the minute I turn on the recorder, through five days of diners, arguments, on-ramps, friends, a reading, a faraway mall, his dogs, up to the last word David said to me.

Except, of course, it’s more than that. The portrait Lipsky shared is a barometer of his own fierce skill and powers of observation. It’s a powerful recollection of a fierce talent too quickly lost.

It’s a wonderful book.

With all of that in mind, I’m really looking forward to what I think might be an equally wonderful adaptation of that book. The End of the Tour would seem to have all the right stuff, with Jesse Eisenberg as David Lipsky and Jason Segal as the troubled author. Directed by James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), the film opened at Sundance to stellar reviews. It will open to wider release July 31st, and I’ll in in that line. Meanwhile, the trailer is below.

 

A Walk in the Woods Film Opens in September

There is something warm and woodsy and deeply filmic about Bill Bryson’s 1997 book A Walk in the Woods, a memoir of his own long walk along the Appalachian Trail.

January Magazine interviewed Bryson when the book first came out, prefacing our interview with an introduction:

The book is about his adventures along the Appalachian Trail, the mammoth American wilderness trail that runs over 2000 miles and through 14 eastern states. It's the longest continuous footpath in the world and snakes through some of the most renowned landscapes in the United States: the Smokey Mountains, Shenandoah National Park, the Great North Woods of Maine and the Berkshires. The Appalachian Trail is no one's idea of a walk in the woods: there are bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants... it's more than a stroll in the park.

A feature film based on the book opens in September. Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Nick Offerman and Kristen Schaal star.

See the full piece here. January Magazine’s 1997 interview with Bryson is here.

Mr. Holmes Hit With Law Suit

Mr. Holmes, a film directed by Bill Condon and starring Ian McKellen and based on a book by Mitch Cullin has been hit with a lawsuit. From Entertainment Weekly:

The plot has thickened for Mr. Holmes, the upcoming film based on the later life of the world’s most famous detective, and not in a good way. The estate of Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle is suing Miramax, Roadside Attractions, director Bill Condon, author Mitch Cullin, and Penguin Random House for copyright infringement.

The film, starring Ian McKellen in the titular role, is focused on Sherlock Holmes’ later years as a retired man contemplating his life while getting involved in an unsolved mystery.

In the legal documents obtained by EW, it is stated that the first 50 of Conan Doyle’s short stories and novels are in the public domain, but the last 10 are still protected by copyright in the United States. Those stories are the ones that “develop the details of Holmes’ fictional retirement and change and develop the character of Holmes himself.” That’s a problem because the estate is asserting that Cullin’s book A Slight Trick of the Mind, which the film Mr. Holmes is based on, is based on these copyrighted stories.

The film is set for a July 17th release. Read the full story is here.

Invisible Man Reboot Set for Production

H.G. Wells’ classic The Invisible Man is getting ready to go into production at Sony, reports Tracking Board, with Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick set to produce.

The original novel, published in 1897, followed the character of Griffin and his descent into madness upon becoming invisible as the result of a scientific experiment. Griffin becomes corrupted by his new power, and uses it to cause anarchy. The studio is developing a new spin that will make the Invisible Man the villain of the film, with the audience following the hero that is tasked to hunt him down. 

This new project is, of course, not the first film version of The Invisible Man:

The iconic character was first brought to life by Claude Rains in the 1933 Universal horror film of the same title directed by James Whale. The character has since become an iconic “monster” for the studio, spawning multiple sequels, including The Return of The Invisible Man starring Vincent Price in 1940. The Sony project is unrelated to Universal’s shared monster universe, which is currently developing a separate project featuring the character. The concept of the novel has been the inspiration for numerous thrillers, including Hollow Man, which starred Kevin Bacon. Other projects include 1992’s Memoirs of the Invisible Man, which starred Chevy Chase and the Invisible Man Syfy series that aired between 2000 and 2002. 

Read the Tracking Board piece here. Cinemablend adds their two bits here.

Jaws Overtime

Jaws the movie turns 40 this year. Don’t expect that to happen without at least a little bit of hullabaloo. And it starts here. A new video essay series begins their journey with “An Absurdly In-Depth Study Of the Beach Scene In Jaws.”

With that set-up, you wouldn’t necessarily think it worth watching, but this is stellar stuff. From Film School Rejects:

“Spielberg at his most Hitchcockian.”

That’s how the team behind The Discarded Image (a new video essay series focused on cinema) describes the beach scene in Jaws where Brody watches a ton of potential beach-loving victims, helpless to save a little boy who’s ripped apart by the shark. I can’t disagree. Mostly because Alfred Hitchcock also loved bad hats.

The video does a striking and thorough job explaining how Steven Spielberg tortures the viewer by forcing them to identify with a powerless figure caught in the middle of a violently chaotic moment. It’s about framing, camera direction and dramatic irony. It’s also about color coordination, foreground imagery and the culmination of earlier character decisions. It’s also about a dozen other things that allow us to marvel at Spielberg’s genius and allow aspiring filmmakers to shudder at the sheer level of detail that goes into making something this powerful.

Film School Rejects sets up and then shares this first episode of a new video essay series called The Discarded Image here. Want to see the beach sequence without commentary? That’s here.

Bruce Willis to Star in Stage Version of Stephen King’s “Misery”

It’s always fun when a high powered screen name heads to Broadway. But this production? This sounds golden all the way through. From The Hollywood Reporter:

[Bruce] Willis will make his Broadway debut opposite stage veteran Elizabeth Marvel (Other Desert Cities, House of Cards) in the play written by two-time Academy Award winner William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), who also wrote the screenplay for the 1990 Rob Reiner film that starred Kathy Bates in her Oscar-winning turn as Annie Wilkes.

Willis will play the housebound romance novelist Paul Sheldon, who becomes a prisoner of his unhinged "Number One Fan" Wilkes (Marvel) after she rescues him from a car accident and learns that he plans to kill off her favorite fictional character.
Will Frears (Omnium Gatherum) has signed on to direct the play, which is scheduled for a limited run in the fall at a theater to be announced.

Misery will be produced by Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures' Mark Kaufman and Castle Rock Entertainment's Martin Shafer and Liz Glotzer. Raymond Wu also is producing.

The play is scheduled for a limited run this fall. You want tickets? You’ll be able to order them from the play’s web site here.

Does Harrison Ford’s Participation in Blade Runner Sequel Confirm Deckard is NOT a Replicant?

Harrison Ford will reprise his role as Rick Deckard in a sequel to Ridley Scott’s science fiction classic, Blade Runner. After much speculation, Ford is confirmed to return in the upcoming production. From Collider:

Harrison Ford is officially returning as Rick Deckard in the sequel to Alcon Entertainment’s Blade Runner with Academy Award nominated director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy) in talks to direct. Last we heard about the film Ridley Scott, who directed the original 1982 film and will produce the sequel, confirmed earlier reports that Ford was interested in the script and said the film would shoot this year.

Turns out Scott was optimistic. Ford will return, but production is not slated for early 2016. Before that, Ford will be seen in The Age of Adaline and the much anticipated upcoming Star Wars: Episode Seven.

Fans are talking, though: does Ford’s participation as a much older Deckard confirm that the character was not a replicant? We’re undecided.

Game of Thrones Fans in for a Surprise

Those who love the oft-bloody Game of Thrones television series, based on the books penned by George RR Martin, are in for a surprise in season five. According to the author, even fans of the books won’t know in advance who will get axed. From Esquire:

While those with novel knowledge were a step ahead of the virgin crowd, their safe days are over. Like Nostradamus, Martin arrived to Sunday night's Writers Guild West Awards with an apocalyptic vision, telling Showbiz411 that characters set to die in Game of Thrones Season Five didn't necessarily die in his original tomes. "Even the book readers will be unhappy," Martin says. "So everybody better be on their toes. [Showrunners] David [Benioff] and D.B. [Weiss] are even bloodier than I am."

According to The Hollywood Reporter, season five will premiere at a red carpet gala at the Tower of London.

The premiere, on March 18, will mark the first time a season of the HBO fantasy series has debuted in Europe ahead of the U.S. Sky is HBO's pay-TV partner in Western Europe and airs Game of Thrones across its markets in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

James Franco to Star in Stephen King Adaptation

A nine-episode adaptation of Stephen King’s 11/22/63 has been announced, with James Franco now tapped to play the starring role. From Vulture:

[Franco will] also be a producer on the project, which is from J.J. Abrams’s Warner Bros. TV–based Bad Robot Productions. Franco will play the central character in the show, a time-traveling English teacher named Jake Epping who heads back to 1963 on a quest to halt President Kennedy’s assassination. 

See the full piece here. January Magazine’s review of the book is here.

Fifty Shades Film Opens to Good News

The film adaptation of E. L. James’ 2011 novel will open in time for Valentine’s Day dating, but theatre goers can anticipate more sex than romance. Roughly one fifth of the film is devoted to sex scenes and those who are familiar with the the premise of the book already know that what we’re not seeing in the film will be implied. From The Sunday Times:

Fifty Shades of Grey is set to be the raunchiest film for more than a decade, featuring a dozen erotic scenes that account for a fifth of its running time.

Reports from previews ahead of the film’s launch on Valentine’s Day suggest it features about 20 minutes of sex during its 100-minute running time.

And even prior to its official release, the film starring Jamie Dornan, Dakota Johnson, Marcia Gay Harden and Luke Grimes has been given the nod for two sequels. Both Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed will be adapted for the screen. From MTV news:

The news was announced on Friday morning (February 6), when Jamie Dornan, Dakota Johnson, director Sam Taylor-Johnson, and author E.L. James hit New York’s Zeigfeld Theatre for the “Fifty Shades First” fan screening event. The fans in attendance started freaking out almost immediately, to the point where one might even say their inner goddesses were soaring.

Miniseries Based on Rowling Novel Set to Air

For those who just can’t get enough J.K. Rowling, a miniseries based on her novel, A Casual Vacancy, will air in the UK on the BBC mid-February and then on HBO in North America in late April.

EastEnders’ Sarah Phelps is writing while In the Flesh’s Jonny Campbell is directing the series, which will focus on a seemingly picturesque English village with a lot of tension underneath the surface. Michael Gambon, Keeley Hawes, Rory Kinnear, Monica Dolan, and Julia McKenzie star.

Entertainment Weekly has more here.

James Franco Puts Together All Star Cast for Steinbeck Adaptation

Variety reports that James Franco will direct and star in an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s sixth novel, In Dubious Battle from 1936.

James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, Bryan Cranston and Danny McBride will star together in the adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle,” which Franco is also directing, 

AMBI Group is financing the film and producing with Rabbit Bandini Productions and That’s Hollywood Pictures Productions.

The original novel portrays the struggle between labor and capital in 1930s America as close to all-out warfare. Published in 1936, “In Dubious Battle” is considered Steinbeck’s first major work. Set in a fictionalized valley in California, the story explores themes Steinbeck later continued to develop: group behavior, social injustice, man’s inhumanity to man. A labor conflict between migrant apple pickers and the local growers’ association is the backdrop against which Jim Nolan (Franco) becomes involved in the labor movement and rapidly matures as he learns what it means to do organizational fieldwork.

You can see the full piece here.

Blade Runner Sequel to Begin Production

The long-awaited sequel to director and producer Ridley Scott’s 1982 cult classic Blade Runner will begin filming in 2015. From Indiewire:

Scott said that he won’t direct "Blade Runner 2," but will stay on as a producer, with filming scheduled to get underway next year. There's no word why he opted out of the director's chair, but considering his next project is "The Martian" with Matt Damon, he probably just doesn't have the time anymore. But he's been deeply involved, working on the script with "Blade Runner" scribe Hampton Fancher, and Scott even spilled a few more details about the rumored and highly expected return of Harrison Ford as Deckard.

The original film was adapted from the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Though the original film tanked with critics, the neo noir dystopian film set in a dank and uncomfortable 2019 Los Angeles quickly made stars of both Scott and Harrison Ford, who played retired police officer Rick Deckard who will reprise the role in the new film.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Film Them

JK Rowling has completed the script for the screen version of the Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. According to Harry Potter producer David Heyman, the script is “wonderful.” From The Telepgraph:

Heyman praised Rowling's debut scriptwriting efforts: "She is so smart, and her turn of phrase, the precision of the language she uses, is a joy to behold."

Heyman's company, Heydey Films, has produced all eight of the blockbuster Harry Potter films, as well as 2013's space epic Gravity. He will work with Rowling and Warner Bros studios on the Fantastic Beasts trilogy, which is set 70 years before Hogwarts and follows the adventures of Newt Scamander, the author of the titular textbook that Harry and his classmates will later study from.

January Magazine reviewed the book when it first came out in 2001. The screen version is anticipated for 2016.

Charlie Brown Getting Closer to the Big Screen

Charles Schulz fans are beginning to get really excited about the upcoming release of the animated adaptation of Peanuts, based on the classic comic series of that same name.

But don’t go standing in line quite yet: the film may still be a year away. From Collider:

The movie is a little under a year away, and producer Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Freaks and Geeks) tells USA Today that if the film had a title closer to other Peanuts adaptations, he would probably call it Don’t Give Up, Charlie Brown!. According to USA Today, “The story follows the little round-headed boy with the indomitable optimism on a quest to get something he’s sure he needs, even though he discovers he’s pretty OK just as he is.”

Read the full piece here.

Gone Over Gone Girl

It seems to us that the hype for the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 debut novel exceeds pretty much anything we've seen for a while. Right now it almost seems possible that the film will do as well as the book. (Which was very well, indeed.)

Next up in the ever-growing lineup of Gone Girl stuff to look at is this television spot for the film, which opens October 3rd. The spot offers more glimpses of a steamy Ben Affleck and a few more clues: did Nick do it? Or not?

Redford to Bring A Walk in the Woods and Climb to Conquer to the Screen

Robert Redford is set to produce a film adaptation of Climb to Conquer, journalist Peter Shelton’s 2003 WWII biography. The story is about the 10th Mountain Division who scaled rock walks at Riva Ridge to conquer a previously untouchable German position. Some experts have claimed it was this pivotal climb that enabled the Allied forces to move forward to ultimate victory.

According to Variety, Kurt Johnstad (Act of Valor, 300: Rise of an Empire) is in discussion to write the adaptation.

Meanwhile, Redford isn’t letting any moss grow on him waiting for the project to come together. He’s currently busy working on the screen version of another, although very different, biography. This one is based on Bill Bryson’s 1997 book, A Walk in the Woods.

Variety reports that Redford has held the film rights since 2005 and that, at various time, Larry Charles, Chris Columbus and Barry Levinson have “been in negotiations to direct at various points.” Things are looking up now, though. From Variety:

Emma Thompson, Nick Offerman and Kristen Schaal have joined Robert Redford in the independent drama “A Walk in the Woods.”

Wildwood Enterprises and Route One Films started production Monday on the film, an adaptation of travel writer Bill Bryson’s memoir. Ken Kwapis (“He’s Just Not That Into You”) is directing from a script by “Little Miss Sunshine” writer Michael Arndt.

Nick Nolte will also star.

Patricia Highsmith: Art and Inspiration

With the recent film release of The Two Faces of January (no relation), yet another powerful vehicle of film comes to the screen based on the work of Patricia Highsmith.

The movie, starring Viggo Mortenson and Kirsten Dunst and directed by screenwriter Hossein Amini, is based on Highsmith’s 1964 thriller of the same name. The Two Face of January is not, of course, the first film to be based on Highsmith’s work. Alfred Hitchcock (Strangers on a Train), Wim Wenders (The American Friend), Claude Chabrol (The Cry of the Owl) and others have all adapted Highsmith’s work for the screen.

Other films inspired by Highsmith’s work are coming and there are many novelists who aim props in the author’s direction. As a result of all this art and inspiration, on The Guardian blog, associate media editor John Dugdale asks, “How did Highsmith become so hip?”

In cinema, the main factors seem to be a new awareness of the diversity of her work beyond the Ripley series, and the latterly acquired potential for period nostalgia – although her writing is spare, post-Hitchcock film adaptations have been visually gorgeous, juxtaposing nasty people with lovely backdrops, such as The Two Faces of January's 1960s Athens. For would-be female crime writers today, part of her appeal is that her protagonists are civilians, in contrast to other potential role models, from PD James and Ruth Rendell onwards, who staged a takeover of the police detective novel (although Rendell later developed a cop-free Highsmith-esque sideline as Barbara Vine). These are contemporary, urban characters, making them more "relatable", at least for grownups, than Du Maurier's heroines, who usually live either in the past or in rural mansions.

Today's proliferating psychological thrillers, however, tend to combine Highsmithian modern setups with Du Maurier's first-person narrative technique in Rebecca, a fusion probably pioneered by Nicci French in a bestselling series starting in the late 90s and now widely adopted as bookshops are inundated with tales of stalker nightmares, sociopathic ex-husbands or bosses and evil best friends.

You can see the full piece here.