PHOEBE GALLAGHER
1. FilmDistrict has picked up Gerard Butler White House thriller “Olympus Has Fallen”, scheduling it for an April 5 release. The similar-themed “White House Down”, starring Channing Tatum, opens three months later on June 28.
2. Luke Wilson (“Charlie’s Angels”) is joining the ensemble cast of “A Many Splintered Thing”, about “a young man disillusioned by love who meets a breathtaking young woman at a charity dinner by pretending to be a philanthropist. Turns out that she’s engaged to a guy who doesn’t like her going on dates. Challenged by the chase, and egged on by his eclectic friends, he feigns a platonic relationship in order to keep seeing her as he tries to conquer her heart.” Chris Evans, Michelle Monaghan, Anthony Mackie, Topher Grace Aubrey Plaza, and Giovanni Ribisi are also onboard.
3. Wes Bentley (“The Hunger Games”) has jumped onto “Final Girl”, Tyler Shields’ directorial debut “about a teenage girl (Abigail Breslin) new in town who is lured into the woods by a group of senior boys to be the victim in their final initiation. They pick the wrong girl.”
4. Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) will adapt and direct the novel “Agaat” for the screen. Spanning the 1950s to the 1990s, the story is set in Apartheid ruled South Africa where a black maid slowly takes over the running of her adopted white parents/employers farm.
5. Ben Stiller is producing “compliKATEd”, a sitcom co-created and starring “Beethoven” actress Bonnie Hunt. “The ensemble comedy centers on Kate (Hunt), a confidently insecure woman with a complicated life.”
6. Mira Sorvino (“Mimic”) will star in the new Jerry Bruckheimer produced pilot “Trooper” for TNT. “Trooper centers on a recently divorced female state trooper (Sorvino) who is as unconventional at work as she is at home raising her three kids. Her partner on the job is a widowed father who has a much more by-the-book approach to policing.” This is the second time Sorvino has played the role; the project was originally set up at CBS last season.
7. Fleur De Lis Film Studios announced that its award-winning feature documentary “Top Priority: The Terror Within” will open the American Film Market with the screening at the AMC 7 in Santa Monica, CA on October 31, 2012 at 3PM. Of most interest to movie fans, the documentary provides a glimpse into the tormented last days of actress Brittany Murphy. Her participation as a witness, unwittingly dragged into the paramount whistleblowing case and scandal at the center of the film, resulted in terrifying consequences for both Brittany and her husband Simon Monjack.
8. Going against the comics, the upcoming “The Wolverine” is not a prequel but a series to the previous “X-Men” movies. This would explain how Jean Grey’s cameo (Famke Janssen) can logically factor into the film.
9. Lisa Kudrow is joining Mira Sorvino in trying to convince Disney into making a “Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion” sequel.
10. “Bait 3D” has become the third most successful Aussie film ever released in China.
