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February 03, 1998

The Best Are Back

Three of Hollywood's best directors have picked their latest projects. Lawrence Kasdan returns from back-to-back bombs (French Kiss and Wyatt Earp) with Mumford.
Wolfgang Petersen, who took to the air with Air Force One, is heading back to the sea (he made his name with Das Boot) with an adaptation of the best-selling novel, The Perfect Storm.

And Tim Burton is looking at Dreamworks' X -- The Man With The X-Ray Eyes as his next project after wrapping Superman Reborn this summer.

JUST WONDERING: When Tim Burton has a mid-life crisis, will he start wearing business suits, buy a Toyota and start making movies like Deep Rising?

BAD WILL HUNTING: Maybe Matt Damon isn't so nice after all. Reports out of various New York gossip rags have Minnie Driver in Golden Globe tears after she found out that she was the ex-girlfriend when Matt announced that he had no girlfriend on Oprah. But never fear, Matt's still sticking with Ben Affleck, do or die.

EMPRESS' NEW CLOTHES: After holding out on "the nudity thing" for years, Heather Graham can't seem to keep her clothes on. First, she boogied the night away as Rollergirl. These days the MPAA won't cough up an R-rating for Graham's sex scene with Robert Downey Jr. in Two Girls and A Guy, no matter how they re-cut the encounter. And now, news that she will turn up as a sexed-up alien in the Danny Boyle-directed segment of the Alien Love Triangle trilogy at Miramax. She will keep her space suit on in New Line's PG-13 Lost in Space, but keep an eye out for the un-cut un-rated video version.

READER OF THE DAY: From Luke R.: " "Titanic Unsinkable," "Titanic Stays Afloat," "New Entries Left in Titanic's Wake." These are but a sample of the myriad of disgusting headlines that puff-piece editors have foisted upon us in the last weeks of Titanic's record success. You know, I got sick of O.J., I got sick of the Lewinsky story, but I swear to God I am going to go postal if I hear any more puns describing Titanic's B.O. take."

Posted by Archive at 12:00 AM |

January 08, 1998

Hollywood's Hottest Director?

Who's the hottest new director in Hollywood? It could well be Jay Roach, who debuted with Austin Powers, and who has now been given Disney's burgeoning non-animated summer "event film" slot for the year2000 with a long-anticipated adaptation of Douglas Adams' TheHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Roach will shoot the film early nextyear after he finishes Disney's David E. Kelley-written hockey movie and presumably, Austin Powers II in the fall. For Disney, the Hitchhiker greenlight suggests that Disney will permanently move out ofthe pre-Memorial Day weekend slot that had produced $100 million hitsthe last two summers with The Rock and Con Air, and into the July 4th weekend slot which has the potential for even bigger revenues. This year, Armageddon takes the slot. Disney may back off the slot for ayear though with Sony's Men In Black 2 and WB's Superman Lives bothlikely to be gunning for the "Second Massive Summer Hit" position afterthe new Star Wars in 1999.

From the "So Few Oscars, So Many Movies" file: The Academy reports that275 films qualified for Academy consideration this year, the highest number in 25 years. Have you seen them all? Ballots go out next weekendand nominations will be announced on February 10. The Awards are onMarch 23. Let the partying begin!

Castle Rock, the once white-hot indie, has suffered since beingpurchased by Turner (Rough Cut's parent company, and then later being folded into the massiveTime-Warner family. Since the success of The Shawshank Redemption, thestudio has released 13 financial misses and only one moderate hit -- theSundance pick-up, The Spitfire Grill. The missed list includes such doozies as Striptease, Dracula: Dead and Loving It and Alaska, the ads for which made everyone think it was an IMAX travelogue. And company co-founder Rob Reiner hasn't helped, contributing only the well-intentioned misses,The American President and Ghosts of Mississippi. But now, Warner Bros.and Polygram will split the costs for Castle Rock to make five movies a year for the next three years. First up, Tom Hanks does Stephen King in The Green Mile, a Hugh Grant thriller called Mickey Blue Eyes, the new Whit Stillman comedy of manners, The Last Days of Disco and "Seinfeld"co-creator Larry David's feature debut, Sour Grapes.

Posted by Archive at 12:00 AM |

December 09, 1997

The More Things Change...

The more things change, the more the Japanese moneymakers get the crap kicked out of them by Hollywood. Buzz has it that Peter Guber is preparing to relocate his Mandalay Entertainment to Warner Bros. in 2000 when his deal with Sony runs out. As you might remember, Guber and his then partner, Jon Peters, were brought to Sony in 1989, bought out of their Warner Bros. producing base at a cost of over $500 million. Peters was soon dumped, but under Guber's tenure, Sony wrote off billions. A deal to start Mandalay was Guber's reward for failure when he was kicked upstairs in 1994, leaving Sony in the hands of former WB film topper, Mark Canton. More losses. Flash forward. Peters is already back at WB, pushing the Superman Reborn train along. Canton, after the summer of Striptease, was dumped for the legendary John Calley and he went back to a Warners' deal, leaving M.I.B., My Best Friend's Wedding and Godzilla to embarrass Calley (as in, story after story reminding everyone that the hits weren't Calley's). And here comes Guber back to the WB fold. Kismet, baby!

Another film being blamed for another tragedy, a.k.a., another sick kid shifting responsibility to avoid a life sentence. This time, it's The Basketball Diaries, a movie that could well have inspired moviegoers unable to get a refund to shoot the theater manager. Kentucky high school rampager Michael Carneal (killed three, wounded five) was asked by prosecutor Timothy Kaltenbach whether he "had ever seen this before, ever seen anything done like this," reported Kaltenbach, "and he said, 'Yes, I have seen this done in Basketball Diaries.'" I guess that the school's principal, who reported that Carneal was a regular victim of intense ridicule was missing the point. Excuse me now, I saw Starship Troopers recently and I have to go kill a bug.

Did I miss anything? Oh yeah. The remake rights to Piranha have been sold for $2 million. But that's not the funny part. They were sold to Fox Family Films. As I recall, Piranha (directed by a pre-Gremlins Joe Dante and written by a cash-poor John Sayles) was filled with violent attacks on naked swimmers by fish with razor-sharp teeth. Now that's family entertainment. What's next for F.F.F., a remake of Flesh Gordon?

So, people, what's on your mind? E-mail me your thoughts and questions.

Posted by THB Archive at 09:33 PM |

November 20, 1997

Upcoming Projects

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have segued from writing The People vs. Larry Flynt to producing The Truth About Sex, the life story of sex study pioneer Alfred Kinsey, with writer/director Michael Davis at the helm. The duo have resisted a title change to a variant of the title of their last movie in release, That Darn Cat.

Premiere reports that Princess Diana was planning to star opposite Kevin Costner in a sequel to The Bodyguard. The story ideas included the Costner and Diana characters falling in love. I can't come up with anything to say about this idea that doesn't involve the phrase "car wreck," so you'll just have the take the story on face value.

Saul Zaentz, producer of last year's Oscar-winning The English Patient and the last producer in Hollywood to actually retain ownership of his soul, appeared in Australia a few days ago and said: "Studios are interested in money, but they think they are creative, that is the problem. Almost all their creativity goes into guessing trends because they love numbers, they love natural disasters and aliens, invasions." I couldn't have said it better myself, Saul.

Participate in The Hot Button! What show business-type or specific individual do you think is ready for a one-way trip to Hades? E-mail your candidates and the reasons. The best entry will win their very own slot on The Hot Button.

Posted by THB Archive at 10:49 PM |

October 23, 1997

Sondra Locke Finally Settles Lawsuit

Sondra Locke's finally settled her lawsuit against Warner Bros. that claimed the studio bilked her out of a three-picture deal because of former beau, Clint Eastwood's influence rather than because of the uniquely worthless Ratboy, the first film in the deal. So what does she do? A nasty tell-all book! Oooooh! Just check out these amazing morsels! Eastwood didn't know who Barbara Walters was! Oooh! Aaah! Clint liked the much-younger Locke to call him Daddy! Oooh! Aaah! Eastwood started whispering after noticing that it worked for Marilyn Monroe! Who the hell is she kidding?! O.J. spent two years on trial for murder, Chrisitian Slater's biting the women that Marv Albert is missing, Robert Downey Jr. is waking up in Baby Bear's bed and the President of The United States is releasing information about his penis in press conferences! If Clint didn't have sex with Burt Reynolds and that stupid orangutan while holding up a 7-11 with a bazooka, who's going to notice?!

Starship Troopers' star-on-the-rise, Casper Van Dien, is about to go native as Tarzan for Warner Bros. Tarzan Jungle Warrior. Van Dien follows superstars Christopher Lambert and Miles O'Keefe in the role. Did I say superstars? I meant guys who clean bars.

Jon Peters, who has produced a grand total of zero hits since Batman and he and his partner Peter Guber teamed up to lose billions for Sony, has decided repetition is the most likely formula for hitmaking. First, he set up the feature version of The Wild Wild West starring Will Smith. Then there's Superman Reborn, except with a wild-eyed lunatic (Nicolas Cage) as the Man Of Steel. Now he's ready to move on from old TV shows and comic books to classic films with The Trail, a remake of the 1956 John Ford classic, The Searchers, except it's set in space! What's next? A remake of Peters' Bonfire of the Vanities with funny jokes and a comprehensible plot?

Do you have any bad ideas for worse remakes? Email me.

Posted by THB Archive at 09:15 PM |

October 14, 1997

Are You a Man-Hater or a Misogynist?

You have your choice with these two hot, hot, hot spec script purchases! You say it's too good to be true? Well, bite into Dog Eat Dog, a romantic comedy about a woman who hires a trainer for her dog and (get this!) her boyfriend. Wacky! And it cost Disney only $250,000 against $500,000. (Do you know what they call a great development exec? A Golden Retriever! Wacka-wacka!) But what about the misogyny, you ask? It's Sony, paying big bucks to Ben Ramsey and Michael McCant for their script, Waiting For That Bitch To Leave. I wonder why they changed the title to Natural Men. Must be the oppression of political correctness. Couldn't be that the guys who wrote it would be seen as flaming a-holes just for plastering that title on the front page of a script, could it?

Looks like Tom and Nicole are finally set to make I Married A Witch at Sony. My personal experience, albeit limited, with the big, red Nicole, tells me that this shouldn't be seen as a "rhymes with" title. But on titles alone, Tom's second movie as producer, partnered with Paula Wagner, may fuel rumors that their marriage is a Mission: Impossible. Meow.

Renny Harlin is almost set for Deep Blue Sea, which Warner Bros has coined "Jurassic-shark." Bio-medical engineers manipulate genetics to create a faster, smarter, more vicious shark so dumb rich guys can hunt them. And of course, it goes wrong. So wrong! (Look for the scene where the shark grows legs and walks past a video store with posters for Cutthroat Island in the window!) The film is racing with Disney's Megalodon about prehistoric sharks. Is prehistory anything before 1977? That's when Jaws came out. The more things change ...

Email me. Talk to Uncle Dave and tell him how you feel.

Posted by THB Archive at 08:28 PM |

October 02, 1997

Geena Davis in Talks for Sailor Moon

Geena Davis is in talks to be first on board Disney's live-action version of the Japanese TV anime, Sailor Moon. The show is about teenage girls with super powers and enormous eyes, leaving Davis to the role of evil Queen Beryl, who is trying to destroy the earth. The Hot Button suggests a cast of actresses who can still pretend to be teens and who have eyes so large that they appear to be human incarnations of velvet paintings of unhappy clowns and orphans: Winona Ryder, Heather Graham, Elizabeth Shue during her The Saint period, and the late, great Marty Feldman, resurrected and in drag for this important cinematic achievement.

O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden got married last week to Rysher Entertainment exec Marcia Carter. Within hours of the nuptials, Darden was claiming that the failure of such Rysher films as A Smile Like Yours, The Evening Star, White Man's Burden, Dear God and Turbulance (this is the short list, folks!) was the responsibility of O.J. Simpson. When reminded that Simpson was in court while these films were developed, Darden blamed Judge Ito. He then claimed that releasing studio Paramount was playing the Dud Card, when they released the films in theaters instead of prisons. It's OK, Chris. It's over man! You can stop making excuses.

First Joe Eszterhas' poison pen letter to Hollywood, Alan Smithee: Burn Hollywood Burn, had its very own director, Arthur Hiller, yank his name off the film, replaced by the traditional "I-Don't-Want-To-Be-Associated- With-This-Crap" psuedonym, Alan Smithee. Now, it's been pushed by distributor Disney all the way until next March, and even then, is scheduled for just a 20-city test release. Irony rears its ugly head, as the film about getting screwed in Hollywood gets screwed for the most traditional reason in Hollywood; the film stinks and no one wants to see it.

E-Mail Dave with the issues that get your button hot!

Posted by THB Archive at 08:16 PM |

September 20, 1997

Cary Granat is the New President of Miramax's Dimension Films

Granat has been credited with his work on Scream, From Dusk Till Dawn, Mimic and the hood spoof, Don't Be a Menace... But Menace was primarily the project of former Dimension V.P. Helena Echegoyen, as was Rhyme and Reason and love jones (her last project at New Line). Her exit this spring not only marked a change of the color guard at Miramax, but left Hollywood without a single African American holding a V.P.-or-better post at any studio.

On the brighter side, the Screen Actors Guild reports that ethnic minority actors have increased their stake in Hollywood in each of the past five years, topping out at 20.7% of all speaking roles last year -- an all-time high. And a few of those roles could actually be performed without a gun or the use of the "F" word.

Meanwhile, even in the future, Laurence Fishburne is being cast as a slave fighting for freedom. In Keanu and Laurence's Excellent Adventure, a.k.a. Matrix, the future is run by computers which trick the world into thinking it's still the 1990s. (If I had to relive another decade of Gen X, I'd kill myself) Mr. Fishburne plays Morpheus, leader of the freedom fighters who recruit Reeves' character to help retake control. And a dumb white man shall lead them!

In ethnicity-
free news, if you are in San Francisco and you love horror movies, you can check out Body Snatchers: The Musical this month. If it succeeds, we'll all be looking forward to Jason On Ice and Robert Englund in Hello, Freddy. ("You're lookin' dead, Freddy! Open head, Freddy!")

Finally, reports of Jabba The Brando making A Civil Action with John Travolta were premature. Robert Duvall will re-team with his Phenomenon co-star since "the deal" for Brando couldn't be worked out. Something about three tons of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out. Rock on, Marlon!

E-Mail Dave with the issues that get your button hot!

Posted by THB Archive at 09:17 PM |