The teaser poster for “Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows” tells you everything you need to know. It’s the final installment in the franchise. It’s in two parts. One part comes out this year, the other next year and oh yeah, it will be 3D. Marketing mission: accomplished.
No surprise here. Mel Gibson has been dropped by his agency WME in the wake of newly leaked tapes where he runs his mouth (again) and drops the n-word. However, even more leaked tapes, of him threatening sexual assault and death on the mother of his child Oksana Grigorieva and generally being a total psychopath, probably would have done him in either way. The fate of the comedy “The Beaver” directed by Jodie Foster and co-starring Anton Yelchin remains up in the air, while we’re sure the upcoming Viking pic with Leonardo DiCaprio is not gonna happen (at least not with DiCaprio). We can’t imagine anyone wanting to be near the guy right now, not even Michael Richards.
Marlo Thomas has joined the upcoming remake of the French film “LOL.” The film centers on “a 15-year-old (Miley Cyrus) who, dumped by her more sexually experienced boyfriend, sets her sights on his best friend. At the same time, her 40-year-old divorced mother (Demi Moore) is struggling to move on with her life.” Thomas will play the family matriarch and will co-star with Ashley Greene, Thomas Jane, Ashley Hinshaw, Lina Esco, George Finn and Douglas Booth. Lisa Azuelos, who helmed the original, will take the same duties on the English language version.
Corey Edwards has cleared up some of his own statements regarding the gestating “Fraggle Rock” feature that’s currently set up at The Weinstein Company. While earlier in the year Edwards complained that he was essentially being booted off the project and it was going in directions he didn’t approve, he has since toned down his remarks saying that the film hopes to “connect with an older, more sophisticated audience.” We’re pretty curious what a sophisticated version of Marjory looks like.
Craig Zobel, director of the cult comedy “Great World Of Sound,” will make his studio feature debut with “The Litigator.” Written by Mike Arnold and Chris Poole, the film is about “a slacker attorney working for his uncle’s prestigious law firm who finds himself in over his head when he’s asked to defend a man wrongfully accused of murder.” So an updated version of “My Cousin Vinny”?
PBS has received the blessing of Johnny Carson’s estate and will begin production on a two-hour documentary on the legendary late night host. Entitled “Carson,” the film will mix archive footage and new interviews to tell the story of the icon’s popularity and withdrawal from public life after leaving Late Night in 1992. No word yet on when the project will air nor if Jay Leno plans on hijacking the production.
Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin are among the directors who have been commissioned to create short films for the exhibit “Essential Cinema” that will be housed at the Bell Lightbox, the new theater and home for the Toronto International Film Festival. “Hauntings I & II” by Maddin will be a “series of shorts that recreates fragments of lost or unrealized film masterpieces” while “8 1/2 Screens” by Egoyan is a film “centered around a key scene in Federico Fellini’s masterpiece ‘8½.'”
We don’t even remember this show, but for the five you that do, DreamWorks is developing the ’80s Lee Majors TV series “The Fall Guy” for the big screen. As the LA Times summarizes, “Majors played Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman by day and bounty hunter by night. He often incorporated his stunts into his bounty-hunting, flying vehicles (his trademark large pickup especially) over large objects, jumping from impossibly high angles and doing other things ’80s heroes did to nab the people they were chasing.” Whatever. We’re so blasé about this now, it’s up to you to insert your own snarky comment about this.