the industry

Disney Struck by ‘Monster Attack’

Courtesy of AiT/PlanetLar


Disney Goes on a Rampage: Disney has picked up the rights to Monster Attack Network, Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman’s graphic novel about an island in the Pacific filled with monsters and the team of adventurers who deal with their rampages. Of course, as we all learned in the eighties, most of these will probably end with said monsters transforming into naked men and cowering off-screen. [HR]

The Man Hates Acting: The go-getters at ComingSoon.net have cast doubt on something we were totally excited about. According to the Javier Bardem himself, it’s “a mistake” to think he’ll be playing Pablo Escobar in Joe Carnahan’s Killing Pablo. Could this be another role dashed by Bardem’s robotlike need to “recharge his batteries?” Will Daniel Day-Lewis’s straw suck this role up too, or might Escobar simply be recast as a woman? [Williams to Solve Mysteries: The Practice’s Kelli Williams will star as Tim Roth’s colleague in Fox’s drama pilot Lie to Me. The series follows Williams and Roth, a human lie detector, as they solve mysteries. You know how your hilarious friends like to add “in bed” at the ends of fortune-cookie messages? In a similar way, TV producers like to add “and they solve mysteries” to the ends of TV pilot synopses. [HR]

Universal’s Soul Mate: The studios must work together if we’re to win the War on Original Ideas, so we’re kind of disappointed in Universal, who seems to be going through the motions by remaking the 2007 Danish film, Island of Lost Souls, for Nikolaj Arcel to direct. What kind of half-assery is this? The prosperity of our nation depends on Universal to remake Carlito’s Way, 1941, or Weird Science! [Variety]

Railsback Stops in Barstow: Steve Railsback will direct Barstow, a script by his late brother Philip Railsback (writer of the upcoming Flash of Genius) about three desperate characters trying to find hope in the small, depressing town whose unofficial motto is “halfway to Vegas, all the way to unfathomable loneliness.” [HR]

Disney Struck by ‘Monster Attack’