From books about cooks to pixels on the loose and oil tankers in peril, this batch of news has something to satisfy everyone. Provided, of course, that you aren’t opposed to pixels, tankers, and cooks. And if you have some sort of weird aversion to those three specific things, well, I just don’t know what to say to you reader.
Deadline has learned that director Lasse Hallstrom (“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”) has been pegged by DreamWorks to helm the adaptation of the Richard C. Morais novel “The Hundred-Foot Journey.” The novel tells of a rivalry between an Indian restaurant and a three-Michelin-star restaurant in France that are 100 feet apart. Despite the competition, Chef Madame Mallory of the French restaurant starts a reluctant mentorship with a young Indian boy from the rival establishment. No official casting has been announced yet, but Helen Mirren is eying the role of Madame Mallory.
Meanwhile, THR is reporting that Chris Columbus is in talks with Columbia and Happy Madison to helm a film based on a popular internet short film that debuted in 2010. The short, titled “Pixels,” was created by Patrick Jean and was a fun graphical display of retro 8-bit video game characters attacking a modern-day New York. If Columbus takes on the film, it’ll mark his first directorial project since 2010’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” The latest rewrite of the script was handled by Tim Dowling, who previously worked on “This Means War.”
Finally, Disney is pursuing Robert Schwentke to direct the adaptation of “The Finest Hour,” which was written by Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson. The film would tell the story of a 1952 Coast Guard mission to rescue the crew of two oil tankers who crash off the coast of Cape Cod. Schwentke’s latest film, “R.I.P.D.,” is set to hit theaters on July 19th.