Following its success with Ray, Universal Pictures has given the green light to another biopic of a singing star, this time the greatest white soul singer of them all. Dusty Springfield was born in 1939 as Mary O'Brien, the daughter of Irish parents in London, and died in 1999.
Starting out as lead singer of The Springfields, a threesome that included her brother Tom, she scored a succession of hits on the pop charts - among them I Only Want to Be With You, I Close My Eyes and Count to 10 and I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself - before recording the revelatory 1969 soul album, Dusty in Memphis. The movie will focus primarily on her life and work in the 1960s.
Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth will don beehive wigs and heavy mascara to play Dusty. Chenoweth won a Tony award in 1999 for the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and was nominated again last year for the musical Wicked. In the latest series of The West Wing, she has a recurring role as the new White House press secretary, Annabeth Schott, and she has her first cinema roles in Bewitched and The Pink Panther, both of which open later this year.
Escape from LA
Writer-director Richard Kelly is set to follow his cult hit Donnie Darko with Southland Tales, a science-fiction thriller set in Los Angeles on July 4th, 2008, when the city stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental collapse. The film stars The Rock as an amnesiac action movie star, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Seann William Scott. Moby will compose the score for the film, which Kelly describes as "a cross between the sensibilities of Philip K Dick and Andy Warhol".
Kelly is planning an expanded version of Southland Tales as a nine-part interactive experience featuring six graphic novels he will write, with the movie completing the final three chapters.
A new muse for Woody?
Scarlett Johansson was a late replacement for Kate Winslet in Woody Allen's new movie, Match Point, which is set in London and has its world premiere at Cannes next month. However, Allen was so impressed with Johansson that he has cast her in his next movie, which starts shooting in London on June 28th. As ever with a new Allen project, the title and storyline are being kept under wraps, and it is not yet known if Allen will be in the cast.
Having stayed behind the camera for Melinda and Melinda, he joins Johansson in Match Point, along with Emily Mortimer and Irish actors Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and James Nesbitt.
Shakespeare as he likes it
Kenneth Branagh, who has kept an unusually low profile, is shooting his first film as a director since the 2000 musical version of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. Having directed films of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet, Branagh is returning to the Bard with As You Like It, which features Kevin Kline, Bryce Dallas Howard, Adrian Lester, Alfred Molina and Janet McTeer.
Branagh's version of As You Like It is inspired by 19th-century Japan. "I visited Kyoto for the first time 15 years ago and felt the sublime landscape and fascinating culture could be an inspired setting for this quintessential romantic comedy," he says. "With sumo, martial arts and cherry blossom, we hope that the drama and the joy can combine to produce a wonderfully enjoyable film."
A director's Irish tales
Launched at a reception in Dublin last night, A Day at the Fire is a collection of 10 short stories by Maurice O'Callaghan, who wrote and directed the 1994 Irish period drama Broken Harvest. Set in the southwest of Ireland, the stories include The Shilling, which was the basis for that screenplay.
The book, which is now on sale, comes with a CD on which actor Patrick Bergin reads the stories, with music by Patrick Cassidy. www.destinyfilmsandmedia.com
