the industry

Steven Soderbergh to Face Knockout

TKO: Former Moneyball director Steven Soderbergh will get to make another movie, namely, Knockout, a spy thriller starring sexy mixed martial artist Gina Carano. In her first starring role, the rising MMA star will play a character from the wrong side of the tracks who utilizes her fighting skills for some unspecified secretive stuff. Relativity Media is financing, and we hope they won’t change their minds. [Variety]

Angry Cage: Nicolas Cage has signed on for The Hungry Rabbit Jumps, playing a man who joins an underground vigilante organization after his wife becomes the victim of a brutal crime. Dedicated Nicolas Cage observers will note that this is the second revenge movie Cage has signed on for in the past two weeks, following Drive Angry. Has Nic got something on his mind he needs to work out through cinema? [HR]

Mrs. Obama: Charles Burnett will direct Stanley Ann Dunham: A Most Generous Spirit, a feature-length documentary on Barack Obama’s mother. The movie will depict how Dunham raised her son in Hawaii and Indonesia and will delve into her pioneering work in third-world microfinance. Also: adorable baby pictures! [HR]

Baby Boom: Lifetime has picked up a made-for-TV movie based on the news of a pregnancy pact at a Gloucester, Massachusetts, high school last year, in which seventeen girls allegedly managed to get knocked up around the same time. The movie will be called Pregnancy Pact and, according to this helpful Wikipedia page, has already been done on Bones and Law & Order: SVU. [Variety]

News on Stage: The hit British play Enron is coming to Broadway in April, with venue and exact dates yet to be announced. The play — which is directed by Rupert Goold, who did Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth, and stars Samuel West as Jeffrey Skilling — will first make a West End run. A play about the Enron scandal! What will they think of next! [Variety]

Russ-Tastic: Richard Russo will write his first television series, an HBO drama based on “The Catskills Gas Rush,” a 2008 New York article by David France. Apparently, gas companies have been itching to tap the Catkills’ natural-gas reservoir, and we’ll let Russo explain the rest — “What the article is about is the kind of class war that was shaping up between dairy farmers … and a lot of actors, artists, filmmakers and writers who have bought second homes there. These poor farmers now are leasing mineral rights to gas companies … while the weekenders are … not anxious to see drilling, chemicals in the air and access roads cutting through their neighborhoods.” [HR]

Steven Soderbergh to Face Knockout