Tintin | SpoutBlog

SAG Strike Threat Eliminated. Trade Roughage 01/27/09

By Christopher Campbell posted 10 months ago

Threat of a SAG strike is now nearly eliminated following the guild’s National Board of Directors’ firing of national executive director and chief negotiator Doug Allen. Also, the board disbanded the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee. While we can now rest assured there will be no work stoppage, though, SAG’s lack of unity will unfortunately continue.
Brendan Fraser may have bombed at the box office this past weekend, but his career will always be safe as long as he’s willing to do movies like Furry Vengeance, in which he’ll play a real estate developer battling against “a band of angry critters.”
While film writers are being axed everywhere, at least two are finding other gigs in filmmaking: Latino Review’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB.net’s Robert Sanchez are two of the producers working on the comic adaptation El Zombo Fantasma, which is described as a “Latino Hellboy.”
Anyone who has ever wished to see Hilary Duff gunned down by machine guns rejoice! The former Disney Channel starlet will play Bonnie Parker in a new telling of the story of Bonnie and Clyde, ingeniously titled The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Transamerica’s Kevin Zegers will play Clyde Barrow.
Fans of Defiance rejoice! Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig will be reunited for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, in which they’ll play Tintin and Red Rackham, respectively.
Fans of Carl Franklin’s Devil With a Blue Dress rejoice! Denzel Washington will be reunited with Jennifer Beals in the Hughes brothers’ The Book of Eli. She’ll play a blind woman who is both daughter to Mila Kunis and sexual prize of Gary Oldman.
Sundance attendees who loved Sin Nombre rejoice! Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has lined up his next two projects at Universal/Focus Features.

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Hollywood, Indies

Chihuahua’s Wow Bow. Trade Roughage 10/06/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

The weekend box office went just as expected with Beverly Hills Chihuahua unfortunately coming out on top with $29 million and Rachel Getting Married earning the best per-screen average ($33,667) with an impressive $303,000 gross from only 9 locations. Also, with so many new films debuting, Flash of Genius, Blindness and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People couldn’t even open in the top ten — the latter placed as low as #19 — and An American Carol and Religilous only placed ninth and tenth, respectively. Still, for a documentary, Religilous‘ $3.5 million debut and $6,972 per-screen average are both honorable achievements. The film had the highest non-fiction debut of 2008, and it’s sure to be the highest-grossing non-concert doc of the year.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist also debuted relatively well this past weekend, which made it a perfect time for Mandate Pictures to annouce that the film’s screenwriter, Lorene Scafaria, will make her directorial debut with the romantic comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
For awhile now I’ve noticed the headlines about Mamma Mia!’s incredible overseas business, but I’ve so far ignored them. Well, here’s the latest off-balanced tally: compared to its already hit-qualifying $143 million domestic gross, the musical has taken in close to $400 million extra from international markets. That’s nearly three-fourths of its total take, for those who like fractions.
200 projects developed by DreamWorks while living under Paramount’s roof will be divided up rather fairly between the two studios now that they’re separating. About one-fifth of those will remain joint efforts, of which one-half will be primarily developed by DreamWorks with Paramount having an option to co-finance and co-distribute. While some of these special-circumstance projects are rumored to be Spielberg’s directing and producing gigs, there’s still no news on what’s going on with the Tintin trilogy.