Universal Turning to ‘Ouija’

By Phil Guie – CinemaSpy.com

Ouija is just a game, right? No, it’s also going to be a movie.
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog, Universal has tapped Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz for Ouija, which would represent the latest tabletop game eyed for the big screen treatment. Hancock’s Peter Berg is currently working a film version of Battleship, while Ridley Scott has long been attached to direct Monopoly.

Ouija boards — or spirit boards, as they are sometimes called — have long been used to communicate with the spirit world; users perform a séance, and a planchette, upon which their fingers are placed, moves about the board, spelling out messages. Parker Bros. acquired the current version of the board in 1966, and since then, 12 million copies have been sold.

Universal is looking to make a supernatural action-adventure movie out of the property, with certain rules related to the game — for example, that it is never to be used alone, or in a graveyard — possibly incorporated into the plot. The film is being produced by Platinum Dunes’ Michael Bay, with Brad Fuller and Andrew Form attached as well.

Kitsis and Horowitz recently wrote the sci-fi adventure Tron Legacy. No word on a director, or if the producers will gently hold the camera while unseen spirits guide it along.

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Peter Berg boards ‘Battleship’

By Mike Fleming – Variety.com

Universal has set July 1, 2011, for the release of “Battleship,” confirming Peter Berg as helmer of the live-action pic based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game.

Deal is part of a two-picture pic pact Berg has made with U, where he’ll follow “Battleship” with an Afghan war drama “Lone Survivor.”

Universal’s date declaration positions “Battleship” to become the second film release from the studio’s multiyear deal with Hasbro to turn its classic games into features. The studio previously set an April 11, 2011, release date for “Stretch Armstrong,” with Steve Oedekerk about to deliver a script.

“Battleship” is the latest in Universal’s strong push toward branded entertainment films, and Hasbro has fast become an increasingly important cog in that campaign.

“This is a powerful brand, and in an era where brands have become the new stars, ‘Battleship’ is a big opportunity,” said U Pictures chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde.

Aside from “Battleship” and “Stretch Armstrong,” U is separately developing “Clue” with Gore Verbinski, “Monopoly” with Ridley Scott, “Candyland” with director Kevin Lima, and “Ouija” with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes. As a board game, “Battleship” was launched by Milton Bradley in 1967 and has sold more than 100 million units.

Scott Stuber and his U-based Stuber Pictures will produce “Battleship” alongside Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir, Berg and his Film 44 partner Sarah Aubrey. Script was written by Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber (“Whiteout”).

Deal reunites Berg with Stuber, who produced the Berg-helmed “The Kingdom” with Michael Mann. Production on “Battleship” will begin next spring.

For Berg, the picture realizes a passion for ship-bound war stories that he picked up from his naval historian father.

“I’ve been consumed with doing one of these since I tried to convince Tom Rothman at Fox to make a film about John Paul Jones, the founder of the American Navy,” Berg said. “As a kid, I was dragged from Navy museum to museum, and spent so much time on ships, listening to my father talk about the great battles of WWII, I did my high school thesis on the Battle of Midway. When this came up, it didn’t take me long to find a take for a film that is filled with raucous action-packed naval battles.”

Peter Berg

Berg called the pic “a contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle” — but he would not disclose any details about the enemy force.

The film will be the next directorial assignment for Berg, who last helmed “Hancock.”

Berg made something of a quid pro quo pact with the studio to follow “Battleship” with “Lone Survivor,” a fact-based story he scripted about a Navy SEAL team that is sent to Afghanistan and is ambushed.
“It was pretty obvious to me they weren’t jumping head over heels to make a war film in the Middle East right now,” Berg said. “So they said, ‘what if you give us ‘Battleship’ for July 2011, and we guarantee you’ll follow with ‘Lone Survivor?’ I already loved the take we had on ‘Battleship,’ so that wasn’t a hard deal to make.’ “

Other projects percolating for Berg, including “Dune” and “Hancock 2,” will come later.

Ridley Scott, DiCaprio travel to “Brave New World”

By Steven Zeitchik – Rueters

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Ridley Scott is going back to the futurism.

The “Blade Runner” director is joining forces with Leonardo DiCaprio to take on one of the most highly regarded dystopian works of literature, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

Both are producing the Universal project, which DiCaprio would tentatively star in and Scott direct. The studio has brought on “Apocalypto” scribe Farhad Safinia to write the script; he’s expected to be working shortly.

Scott has mentioned casually in interviews that he’s interested in the 1931 novel, whose film rights are owned by DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company, prompting a flurry of rumors on sci-fi and other blogs over the past year. But the studio details as well as DiCaprio’s personal involvement always have been murky.

Now, with a writer on board and production executives meeting frequently during the past six months, the project has more momentum, though several people familiar with it emphasize that it remains at the development stage.

Much of the timing going forward will depend on the script. Scott is not committed to direct anything beyond “Robin Hood,” which is in post-production. DiCaprio is shooting the Christopher Nolan adventure tale “Inception,” but does not have a movie lined up after that.

“Brave” has had several go-rounds on television, including a Leonard Nimoy-Peter Gallagher picture on NBC in 1998. But Huxley’s idea-rich novel hasn’t had a shot on the big screen.

Huxley sets his book in a seemingly perfect 26th century world that has achieved harmony by tightly controlling birth, which takes place mainly in laboratories, and outlawing family. The world is populated by a series of five castes, each with its own defined roles.

Characters who figure in are Bernard, a lower-caste member, and Lenina, the woman with whom he is infatuated. DiCaprio would likely play Bernard, who is persecuted when the leaders of the society find his behavior antisocial.

Dystopian stories have sometimes proved difficult to film. George Orwell’s “1984″ has had several theatrical turns, including Michael Anderson’s Columbia version in 1956 and the somewhat better regarded John Hurt vehicle 25 years ago.

Scott is considered one of the few who can pull it off. The director took the Philip K. Dick novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” and turned it into the 1982 futurist pic “Blade Runner.” While the movie divided critics and didn’t enjoy a great theatrical run, it has had a long life on video and become a cult classic.

Scott directed DiCaprio in last year’s Middle East thriller “Body of Lies,” and the two are also producing dark thriller “The Low Dweller” at indie filmmaker Relativity.

Vin Diesel To Return In R-Rated ‘Riddick’ Sequel?

Ross Miller – ScreenRant.com

Both ShockTillYouDrop and Bloody-Disgusting got a chance to sit down with Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick writer, David Twohy, who gave an update on the status of the third Riddick movie. The writer/director of the upcoming A Perfect Getaway confirmed that he and star Vin Diesel are currently in the midst of discussions of how to bring the character back for a third movie, including a very welcome detail that they are aiming for an R-Rated movie again.

Twohy co-wrote and directed Pitch Black back in 2000, before going on four years later to solely write and direct its step-down sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick. Pitch Black was rated R and delivered a pretty hardcore sci-fi action/horror movie that still holds up today. Its sequel was brought down to a PG-13 rating, and even Twohy himself agrees that was a mistake for the series. Check out some of what Twohy said about what direction he and Diesel are aiming to take the franchise for the third installment:

“I’ve sketched out two ideas for the next installment… Vin [Diesel] and I have decided on one approach of those two, and there’s some interest at the studio level but it would be as a PG-13 film, and we don’t want to do that anymore. That’s one of the concessions we thought we made with ‘Riddick’ that we shouldn’t have made.”

“We also spent too much money and we were too ambitions, so yes, if we do go back to a third one, it will be focused again, hopefully again the same way that ‘Pitch Black’ was, and we’ll spend less money doing it. We’re just trying to figure out how much less we can do it for, because I don’t think Vin is going to work for scale again.”

Twohy has said that they’re specifically aiming for the third Riddick to be R-Rated, even wanting to make sure they have some control over it to make that rating possible:

“We want an R, so we are looking at the possibility of setting it up as an independent movie and selling it territory by territory and thereby keeping an ownership stake in the movie. But we’re trying to see what that would yield in this unsafe market…”

Twohy also explained that the third Riddick would be a lot more scaled down in size compared to The Chronicles of Riddick, being much more akin to Pitch Black in that sense. He says that the story will always be Riddick-centric, and gives his opinion that even if you took the creatures out of Pitch Black, you still have some very interesting character dynamics.

On top of working hard on ideas for Riddick 3 (hey, we’re calling Batman 3 as such…), Twohy also has a supernatural thriller on his plate which he has written himself called Crying Havoc. That is set to be produced by none other than Ridley Scott. Here’s what Twohy had to say about the project:

“[My next movie] could be a supernatural thriller called CRYING HAVOC that Ridley Scott would produce and I would direct. It’s about an FBI agent who uses technology to track a spy across the world only to learn that the spy is more of a demon than a man. That chase leads our FBI agent into the lower circles of hell, at least psychologically speaking. I think it’s a very cool supernatural thriller with a lot of great visuals to it. That’s already written and that could pop next. Ridley has been shepherding that project along.”

Although no filming or release date has been set as of yet for Riddick 3, Twohy hinted at a possible production date of early 2010.

Source(s): ShockTillYouDrop, Bloody-Disgusting,  ScreenRant.com

Ridley Scott Will Direct Alien Prequel

TheHDRoom.com

Ridley Scott’s involvement in an Alien prequel has proven to be more substantiated than wishful rumors.

Variety is reporting Fox is moving forward to resuscitate the four film franchise by hiring Jon Spaihts to write a prequel script and attaching the original Alien director Ridley Scott to direct.

Scott’s name has come up in rumors to helm an Alien prequel for some time now. Over that time, Robert Rodriguez has gotten a Predator reboot off the ground with Fox which is expected to hit theaters next summer. With Alien also getting a fresh start, we can formally say adieu to the Aliens vs Predators franchise.

Spaihts’ recently completed the script for Keanu Reeves’ space epic Passengers which helped him secure the Alien prequel gig. Though Spaihts’ body of work appears slim at first glance, he has a number of writing projects in the hopper including The Darkest Hour for Timur Bekmambetov, Children of Mars for Disney, and a rewrite of St. George and the Dragon for Sony.

Still unknown at this time is whether Spaihts will write a direct prequel that leads into the events of Alien or a completely separate standalone story constructed to launch a new franchise with new heroes. I am personally pulling for a clever mix of the two.

Russell Crowe counts ‘Three Days’

Jay A. Fernandez and Steven Zeitchik – HollywoodReporter.com

Russell Crowe is in final negotiations to star in writer-director Paul Haggis’ next film, “The Next Three Days,” for Lionsgate.
Haggis, who made his Oscar-winning “Crash” at the studio, is writing, directing and producing the remake of the French thriller “Pour Elle.” It tells the story of a married couple thrown into a harrowing situation when the wife is imprisoned for a murder she claims she didn’t commit and the husband must devise a way to get her out.
Lionsgate acquired the remake rights to the 2008 original, written and directed by Fred Cavaye, from Wild Bunch and Fidelite Films in June. Filming is scheduled to begin in September.
Haggis’ Highway 61 Films partner Michael Nozik and Fidelite’s Marc Missonnier and Olivier Delbosc are producing. Lionsgate execs Alli Shearmur and Wolfgang Hammer are overseeing for the studio.
The WME-repped Crowe is finishing up filming on Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” for Imagine Entertainment and Universal, which will release the film in May. He last starred in “State of Play” and “Body of Lies.”
Lionsgate will release “Gamer” and “Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All by Myself” in the fall.

Making a werewolf, one hair at a time

Werewolf Death Eater Fenrir Greyback

Patrick Kevin Day – LATimes

The look of Death Eater Fenrir Greyback in ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ took 10 makeup artists painstakingly applying goat hair to silicone.

Special makeup designer Nick Dudman had to scramble to complete the look of the werewolf Death Eater Fenrir Greyback in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” “They didn’t select [actor Dave Legeno] until quite late, and we didn’t have a lot of time,” Dudman explained. Luckily, this wasn’t some two-bit indie production; this was a big-budget Warner Bros. blockbuster, with the resources to go with it. “We had about 10 people on just that one character,” Dudman said. “We can take the time to pay attention to detail.” For Greyback, Dudman’s team spent seven months stockpiling a supply of multi-piece silicone makeup to be applied to the actor’s head and chest, with each bit of goat hair individually punched into the makeup. “You can’t use wig lace, because it will show,” Dudman said. “It has to be done by hand.” It took about 5 1/2 days to apply the hairs for one set of makeup that would be used for only one day of shooting. Dudman had no way around it. “The makeup removal process would always result in the silicone pieces being destroyed.”

Editor’s Note:

Nick Dudman and his team have created the make-up effects and the magical animatronic creatures in the Harry Potter films, garnering BAFTA Award nominations for the first four of the series to date.

Dudman got his start working on the Jedi master Yoda as a trainee to famed British make-up artist Stuart Freeborn, on “Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back.” After apprenticing with Freeborn for four years, Dudman was asked to head up the English makeup laboratory for Ridley Scott’s “Legend.” He subsequently worked on the makeup and prosthetics for such films as “Mona Lisa,” “Labyrinth,” “Willow,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Batman,” “Alien3″ and “Interview with the Vampire,” among others.

In 1995, Dudman’s career path widened into animatronics and large-scale creature effects when he was asked to oversee the 55-man creature department for the Luc Besson film “The Fifth Element.”, for which he won a BAFTA Award for Visual Effects. Since then, he has lead the creatures/make-up effects departments on several blockbusters, including “Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace,” “The Mummy,” “The Mummy Returns” and consulted on the Costume effects for “Batman Begins.” Dudman recently designed the animatronics for Alfonso Cuaron’s “Children of Men.”

In 2007, he was awarded a special achievement Genie by the Canadian Academy for Make-up on “Beowulf and Grendel”.

“Sacred Prey” targeted as big-screen project

Steven Zeitchik – Hollywood Reporter

Warner Bros. and in-demand screenwriter Brad Ingelsby will develop a feature based on “Sacred Prey,” Vivian Schilling’s novel about a hit man who becomes the victim of his own takedown.

The high-concept thriller centers on a loan shark who kills a man he believes duped him, only to wake up and find himself in the body of that man three days before the murder. He then embarks on a furious effort to prevent the murder he committed.

Tentatively dubbed “Sacred Prey,” the project might yet get a new title, with “Hit Man” among the names being considered.

During the past 15 months, Ingelsby has climbed from an unknown to the top of the screenwriters’ pile.

An insurance salesman from Pennsylvania, Ingelsby created a sensation with “The Low Dweller,” a spec script he wrote on a lark. The dark thriller, which Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott quickly signed on to produce, ignited a bidding war that Relativity Media won.

Ingelsby soon had other projects set up at Hollywood studios, including the Todd Field-directed “Nancy & Danny” at Paramount and the Marc Forster-produced “Die Bad” at Universal.

Ridley Scott remaking Robin Hood with Russell Crowe

Scource: Hollywood Reporter, IMDB

Ridley Scott’s still-not-officially-titled Robin Hood has added another name to its already-impressive cast list, with the news that Danny Huston has signed on to play Richard the Lionheart.

Last seen getting his bad guy on as General Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Huston will this time be playing a character who’s (traditionally anyway) a good guy in the Robin Hood universe. Richard the Lionheart was the King whose departure for the crusades, and subsequent capture and imprisonment, left the power vacuum filled by the cowardly lion Prince John and the big fat grey wolf the Sheriff of Nottingham. This being a reworking of the franchise, it’s always possible that the Lionheart’s a rather more complex character – as indeed he was in real life.

Russell Crowe is co-writer and will star as Robin Hood. Cate Blanchett has been tabbed to play Maid Marian

 Paul Engelen (Gladiator, Quantum of Solace, Troy) is the makeup designer

‘Moon’ exploration: Director probes notions of home, self

'Moon' starring Sam Rockwell

MICHAEL UPCHURCH – The Seattle Times

Duncan Jones’ eerie yet playful science-fiction feature debut, “Moon,” flirts with a number of contradictions.

Much of it is special-effects driven, yet its technical wizardry all but vanishes from mind as viewers are pulled in by the dazzling performance(s) of Sam Rockwell as a lunar mining engineer and his mysterious double. It’s a film that explores our notions of home and self, even as it portrays a figure who may not have either.

If the identity issues facing Sam Bell (Rockwell) feel as deftly addressed as they are urgent, that may be because 38-year-old Jones is the son of David Bowie and has surely dealt with some tricky identity issues of his own.

He decided some years ago that “Duncan Jones” suited him better than “Zowie Bowie,” his given name. And while growing up in London, Berlin, Scotland and Switzerland, he had ample opportunity to ponder what, exactly, “home” means to him.

“Moon” is the fascinating result of his musings — an intelligent, action-spiced meditation on sense of self and sense of place.

Jones, a genial fellow with a ready laugh, is the first to say that many of the warmer qualities of “Moon” should be credited to Rockwell: “He’s very human. He’s very quirky. And he just does things that immediately grab your attention.”

Still, it took some effort to talk Rockwell into tackling the film’s dual roles.

“He was nervous,” Jones said. “It was an awful lot to ask: first-time director, special-effects heavy, huge amount of weight and responsibility on his shoulders.”

Jones himself had prepared for the project with two years at London Film School and a long immersion in music-video and commercial work. His aim: to get experience with special effects, fight-choreography and anything else that would serve him in attaining his real goal of making feature films.

At the same time, Jones felt strongly that technique alone doesn’t make a movie. There is, he says, “lots of personal stuff in the film,” especially in its treatment of Bell’s homesickness (he’s got two weeks left on a three-year contract before he can return to Earth).

“It’s tricky,” Jones says. “Because I’ve always traveled, growing up, it is difficult to get a sense of home. I think it is more an aspiration than a reality for me. Home will hopefully be the place where I eventually buy a house and have a family. But I’m not there yet. I don’t have a home yet.”

He pauses, then admits, with a big laugh, “That sounds kind of sad.”

In the film, Rockwell’s Bell shares his “home” with Gerty — a clunky computer/robot (voice by Kevin Spacey) that’s a deliberate spin on HAL from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Much of the humor in “Moon” stems from Gerty’s mothering behavior toward Bell. Another sly touch is Jones’ cheeky use of Chesney Hawkes’ one-hit wonder “The One and Only” (“the epitome of cheesy music”). And Rockwell — working within a special-effects constraint inspired by David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” — supplies a slapstick turn or two in a film that’s generally unnerving.

“The point that Sam made, and really got across to me — I’ll remember this for the rest of my career — is that … you need to have those moments of levity in order for the audience to relax and prepare themselves to go wherever you’re going to go next.”

Jones was able to keep his budget to a modest $5 million by minimizing his use of computer graphics: “A lot of the exteriors of the vehicles driving around on the lunar surface were done with model miniatures — the same techniques that they were using in the ’70s and ’80s … a way of working that just doesn’t get done anymore.”

Karen Dawson (Troy, Muppet Treasure Island, Dinotopia)  is the makeup designer

 DUNCAN JONES’ SCI-FI INFLUENCES
“2001: A Space Odyssey”: “It’s the granddaddy,” Jones says.

“Outland”: Sean Connery is a police marshal investigating murders on a moon of Jupiter.

“Alien”: Ridley Scott’s classic spaceship thriller.

“Silent Running”: Bruce Dern turns renegade when he’s ordered to destroy the ship carrying Earth’s last plants.