Ridley Scott and Steve Zallian, who previously worked together on American Gangster, have acquired the rights to the 2003 BBC pseudo-documentary The Day Britain Stopped, and are currently looking to use the original as the inspiration for a feature focusing on the premise of, “using a manmade disaster to ignite a global catastrophe.”
Aline Brosh McKenna has been hired to rewrite an updated take on the musical Annie for producers Will Smith and Jay-Z. The hip-hop take on the little orphan will star Smith’s daughter Willow Smith.
Lady Gaga will be making her silver screen debut, in Robert Rodriguez‘s Machete Kills, playing a character called La Chameleón.
Kevin Durand and Chad Michael Murphy are teaming up as cops in the upcoming indie Fruitville, joining Ahna O’Reilly, Octavia Spencer, Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz and Tristan Wilds. Ryan Coogler is writing/directing the film which is, “based on a true-life police shooting, film stars Jordan as Oscar Grant, a
young Bay Area resident who was detained and killed by BART (Bay Area
Rapid Transit) cops in Oakland on New Year’s Eve in 2008. Event was
captured on camera, and the ensuing trial and its verdict spurred
protests and riots.”
The remake of About Last Night has two more potential cast members joining previously announced Kevin Hart. Michael Ealy is in talks to take on the role originated by Rob Lowe in the original, with his love interest as yet uncast. Regina Hall would play the Elizabeth Perkins character who has a love/hate rapport with Ealy’s best friend Hart (played by Jim Belushi in the first film). Both films are based on the play Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet.
Terrence Howard and Dawn Olivieri are joining Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington in David Ayer‘s upcoming action thriller, Breacher. Based on a screenplay by Skip Woods, the film, “follows 10 DEA agents who pull off a heist during an enforcement operation, then start dying one by one. Howard and Olivieri play members of the DEA team who are engaged in an affair, and who conspire to steal the already stolen goods.”
Kimberly Pierce will direct a remake the 2000 French film, With A Friend Like Harry. Wentworth Miller will adapt the original story which, “centers on a family man, Michel, who is joined on vacation by an old schoolmate, Harry, who he doesn’t remember. At first Harry seems to be just what the family needs, but the friendlier he gets the more mysteriously menacing his effects become.”
Three more cast members have been added to Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street. Ethan Suplee, Katarina Cas and Jake Hoffman (playing shoe designer Steve Madden) will join Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Jean Dujardin, Rob Reiner, Kyle Chandler, and Jon Favreau in the film based on the memoir by Jordan Belfort and adapted by Terence Winter.
