Winters Goes Smurfing: 84-year-old Jonathan Winters (It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World) is set to provide his voice to that of Papa Smurf in the Columbia Pictures’ The Smurfs, the CGI adaptation of the 1981 NBC cartoon, which originates from the 1958 Belgian comic strip. [UGO]
Browning is a Beauty: Emily Browning (The Uninvited) gives good reason for the category for these casting posts as she replaces Alice in Wonderland star Mia Wasikowska in Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty, a haunting erotic fairy tale about a student who drifts into prostitution and finds her niche as a woman who sleeps, drugged, in a ‘Sleeping Beauty chamber’ while men do to her what she can‘t remember the next morning. Yeah, we’re not talking Disney here with the mild spindle prick. Browning will next be seen in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch. [The Australian via The Playlist]
Will Gosling Drive for Winding Refn? Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson) is looking at Ryan Gosling to star in his next film Drive “about a stuntman by day, a getaway driver by night” based on James Sallis’ novel. [Empire]
Hughes Bros. Rev Up Akira: The Hughes brothers hadn’t directed a film since 2001’s From Hell before The Book of Eli was released in early 2010, but they must have impressed Warner Bros. as they are in negotiations to direct a live-action remake of the cult favorite anime Akira, from a script by Iron Man scribes Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. I recently watched the 1988 original, adapted from Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1982 manga and wasn’t blown away, but this appears to be big news for a lot of onliners. [Vulture]
NYC Escape Back on Track?: Allan Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) has apparently written a script for a remake of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York that appears to have re-energized the once abandoned project. Word is Loeb “nailed the humor in Plissken without slipping into camp, and he changed Snake’s rescue-mission target from a president to a female senator, thereby upping the banter quotient. But just as big a factor was economic: They found a much cheaper way to turn Manhattan into a giant prison.” Click the link that follows for the full story. [Vulture]
Lehane Dabbles in Screenwriting: Novelist Dennis Lehane, recently recognized as the author of “Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shutter Island,” is now ready to begin adapting screenplays starting with his own short story “Animal Rescue” for Fox 2000. The story revolves around a killing that results from a lost and contested pit bull. [Variety]
Dune Gets Re-written: We already learned Taken helmer Pierre Morel had signed on to direct a new adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune and today it was announced Chase Palmer has been brought on board to work Morel’s ideas into Josh Zetumer’s already-written screenplay. [Hollywood Reporter]
New Line Books New Vacation: New Line Cinema has hired Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley to write a new screenplay continuing the adventures of the Griswold family, first made famous in 1983 with National Lampoon’s Vacation starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo. The new film basically sounds like the old films and will center on the Griswold’s son, Rusty, now a grown man, who decides to take his own wife and kids on a road trip to Wally World before it closes forever. Chase is expected to reprise his role as Clark Griswold, now a grandfather. [Variety]
Boulevard Trio: Pierce Brosnan, Ed Harris and Jim Gaffigan have signed on to star in the comedic thriller Salvation Boulevard for George Ratliff. The film is set in the world of mega-churches in which a former Deadhead-turned-born again-Christian finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega-church who will do anything to protect their larger-than-life pastor. [Variety]
