Cooper Goes Grey: Bradley Cooper is sticking with his A-Team director Joe Carnahan and has signed on to star for the director in The Grey, a thriller written by Carnahan and Ian Jeffers based on a short story written by Jeffers. The story centers on survivors of a plane crash who are then hunted by a pack of wolves. [Variety]
Three Join Magnificent Eleven: Irvine Welsh, author of “Trainspotting,” is set to direct the direct gritty UK comedy The Magnificent Eleven with Sean Bean, Dougray Scott and Robert Vaughan already set to star. The film is a modern day remake of The Magnificent Seven, which itself is a re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and as it would happen Vaughn is the last surviving cast member from the original John Sturges-directed western. In Magnificent Eleven, the Cowboys are a local amateur soccer team, the Indians run a nearby Tandoori restaurant and the bandits are a group of menacing thugs run by a maniac called Blonde Bob. [Screen Daily]
Mike Newell Directing Spies: Mike Newell (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) has signed on to direct an untitled spy feature for Warner Bros. centering on the mysterious death of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko based on the book “The Terminal Spy” by New York Times’ London bureau chief Alan Cowell. Newell is developing the feature with screenwriter David Scarpa. [Variety]
Glenn Gets Close with Albert Nobbs: Glenn Close has signed on to star in Albert Nobbs in a role she made famous originally playing it on the stage. Co-starring in the feature to be directed by Rodrigo Garcia will be Orlando Bloom, Michael Gambon and Janet McTeer. The film is described as a Gosford Park (great film), “below stairs” drama featuring Close as a woman in 19th Century Ireland who disguises herself as a man in order to survive. [Screen Daily]
Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman ‘s upcoming “comedy” The Baster is reportedly looking for a new title based on “focus-group testing.” Considering the film is about a woman who gets pregnant via a sperm bank and a turkey baster this isn’t entirely surprising considering the gag reflex it causes. The script (written by Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps scribe Allan Loeb) was, however, a 2008 Black List favorite. [Facebook and Vulture]
Delpy Takes 2 Days from Paris to New York: Julie Delpy starred in one of the most unlikely of all-time great sequels, Before Sunset and wrote and directed a sweet romantic drama titled 2 Days in Paris in 2007, and while it didn’t earn a considerable amount of buzz, it does hold a 85% rating at RottenTomatoes, which has me wondering if the now announced sequel, 2 Days in New York will be the “next” Before Sunset?
Delpy again wrote the script and will direct describing it saying, “It’s about the difficulty of relationships but also about the main character’s evolution in general. It’s a very modern story about the complexities of being a woman and not being completely consumed by your partner.”
Delpy will reprise her starring role of Marion, a Frenchwoman who now finds herself in New York with her child and a new guy, having broken up with her 2 Days In Paris lover (and the father of her child) who was played by Adam Goldberg. [Screen Daily]
