THE production company headed by directors Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack has acquired the remake rights to The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's German thriller set in the former East Berlin in the mid-1980s. It won the Oscar for best foreign-language film last month and opens here on April 13th.
Meanwhile, Joe Carnahan, who directed Narc and Smokin' Aces, is remaking the 1965 psychological thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing, with Reese Witherspoon as the woman whose daughter disappears without a trace. Otto Preminger directed the original, which starred Carol Lynley, Laurence Olivier and Keir Dullea.
Ken Davitian, who played the Kazakh TV producer in Borat, has joined the cast of Peter Segal's movie of the 1960s TV spy comedy Get Smart, which stars Steve Carrell as Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, with Alan Arkin, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and Terence Stamp.
And Sony Pictures plans an autumn 2008 release for the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123(1974), that underrated train hijacking thriller that starred Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. It was remade for US TV in 1998 with a cast led by Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio. Sony has yet to announce a director and cast for the new treatment.
Take a chance on Pierce
Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep will star in the movie of Mamma Mia!, the stage musical featuring Abba's greatest hits. Now playing at Dublin's Point, the show has earned more than two billion dollars in ticket sales around the world since 1999. Brosnan will play one of three men summoned to a Greek island by a young woman who believes one of them is her father, and he will perform a duet with Streep on SOS. He warbled a couple of songs in the Irish movie Evelyn, while Streep demonstrated her singing prowess in Postcards from the Edgeand A Prairie Home Companion. Mamma Mia!, which starts shooting in London and Greece from late June, will be directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who was at the helm of the original stage production.
Irish films go to France
True North, Steve Hudson's immigrant trafficking drama, and Small Engine Repair, Niall Heery's tale of guilt and betrayal in a rural Irish town, are among the films in competition at the 22nd Cherbourg Festival of Irish and British cinema, which opens in the French port next Wednesday.
The other entries are Ghostwood, Justin O'Brien's supernatural thriller; Johnny Was, Mark Hammond's inter-racial gangster thriller; Marion Comer's picture of a terminally ill boy in 48 Angels; and January 2nd, Matt Winn's Welsh domestic drama. The festival's Ireland in Close-Up strand will include screenings of the silent films Guests of the Nation and Irish Destiny. For more information, go to www.festivalcherbourg.com
The last Premiere
After 20 years on the newsstands, US movie monthly Premiereis closing down. A spin-off from the French film magazine of the same name (which will close in six months) the US monthly made for lively reading in its early years, when its international distribution was so limited that Irish readers could buy it only at Forbidden Planet in Dublin. Its story ideas declined - along with its advertising revenue - in later years, while early deadlines meant that it could not compete with popular rival Entertainment Weeklyand movie websites.
Pulling the plug on Premiere this week, publishers Hachette Filipacci announced that it would continue in online form at www.premiere.com.
Go sell the Spartans
Such is the level of anticipation surrounding Zack Snyder's ultra-stylish 300, about the Battle of Thermopylae, that there have been over 20,000 posts about it on www.imdb.com, even though it has only been screened at the Berlin and Dublin festivals before going on US release today. One Irish post suggested that "they speeded up the frames per second to shave off about 15 minutes to fit it in the schedule" as the Dublin festival's surprise film. That was not the case. Another Irish post stated that 300 is not due for release here until April 2008. In fact, it opens at Irish cinemas on March 23rd.
