Killer Feathermen: Jason Statham will star in the action thriller The Killer Elite, an adaptation of Ranulph Fiennes’s The Feathermen. Statham plays a retired Navy seal that comes back into the field to save his best friend, a member of a British special-forces team being hunted by assassins. Good news: The deal just closed, meaning there’s plenty of time before production starts to change the name back to the wildly-more-appropriate The Feathermen. [Variety]
Rourke Rolling: Kids’s Larry Clark will direct Mickey Rourke in Mona Lisa, an adaptation of the 1986 British gangster flick. Rourke will play an ex-con who is hired as a driver for a high-class escort; Eva Green is in talks to join the movie as well. Sounds pretty cool — although we’d honestly be a bit more excited if Mickey Rourke was starring in a remake of Mona Lisa Smile. [Variety]
Danger Zone: Monica Belucci has joined the cast of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as Veronica, a sorceress and the long-lost love of Nicolas Cage’s character, Balthazar Blake. The plot revolves around Blake, a sorcerer training a protégé to help him fight the evils in contemporary New York. Seeing as the shoot seems to be doomed, we can only say godspeed, Monica Belucci. Godspeed. [Variety]
Quixote’s Back: Terry Gilliam is taking another shot at The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. The original shoot took place nine years ago and was famously so cursed its miscues provided enough fodder for the cult documentary Lost in La Mancha. We feel good that this time the project — about a filmmaker charmed into Quixote’s world — will succeed, mostly because screenwriter Tony Grisoni had this to say: “Nearly ten years on, I find myself lending a hand to get that crazed, giggling bedlamite back in the saddle. I’m talking about Don Quixote. In spite of God and the devil, he shall ride again.” [HR]
Papa Doc: Screenwriter Kirk Ellis (John Adams) will adapt A.E. Hotchner’s memoir Papa Hemingway, about Hotchner’s friendship with the author in the last fourteen years of his life. Spoiler alert: they did a lot of fishing. [Variety]
North American Scum: Comedy Central has picked up the animated series Ugly Americans from Simpsons writer David Stern. The show, set in an alternative-universe New York City where sci-fi creatures walk among us, revolves around a human social worker for the Department of Immigration. Maybe after he’s done drawing this thing or whatever, David Stern can do something about the deplorable state of officiating in the NBA. [HR]
