Newsbites: Winter! Howard! Jihadists! Opus!

Last updated on: February 16, 2007 at 11:37 pm by Peter T. Chattaway

Newsbites: Winter! Howard! Jihadists! Opus! 2007-02-16T23:37:00-08:00 Peter T. Chattaway

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Figured I’d toss these out there while I can.

1. Ralph Winter recently talked to Infuze Magazine about various subjects, including: whether Christian horror films — like Thr3e, which he produced — should have R-ratings; the lack of mystery and violence in The Nativity Story; and his own current plan to make a movie based on C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters:

Does the movie have a green light?

Not yet. We’ve been talking to Randall Wallace about writing and directing. We need to have more discussions with Fox and Walden about that, and make sure that Randy’s still available. Everybody wants to make this movie; I think it’s going to happen, I just don’t know what the timetable is right now.

We’re very excited about that. With the right script, dealing with temptation and that whole upside down world, it could be a very, very interesting movie. And it’s going to be dark. This isn’t a light, happy, Narnia piece.

That would be the same Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart (1995; my comments) and directed We Were Soldiers (2002; my article), both of which were into the R-rated violence big-time.

Winter also says:

I’ve read a couple of scripts lately based on Old Testament stories. One of them is about David, and his rise from a shepherd to becoming the anointed king. And it’s gritty. It’s brutal. It’s reflective of the time. And it’s not written by a Christian. But it’s a compelling story, and that’s the kind of movie I want to make!

This sounds suspiciously like that screenplay that J. Michael Straczynski said he was finishing a few weeks ago — a screenplay that he compared to Braveheart. Detect a theme here?

2. Variety reports that Ron Howard is thinking about remaking Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005). Because, of course, his last remake of a French-language film about video-voyeurism — EdTV (1999; my review), a remake of the Quebecois film Louis 19, le roi des ondes (1994) — was so memorable. What I want to know is what sort of American political subtext will replace the original film’s subtext, which concerned French-Algerian relations.

3. Variety reports that Jerry Bruckheimer has bought the movie rights to ‘Jihadists in Paradise‘, an Atlantic Monthly article by Mark Bowden, who previously wrote the book that became the Bruckheimer-produced Black Hawk Down (2001; my review):

“Jihadists in Paradise” details the emergence in the Philippines of the Islamic terrorist faction Abu Sayyaf and one of its leaders, Aldam Tilao. Tilao put his group on the map by sneaking by boat into a diving resort and taking 20 hostages, including three Americans. He and his armed thugs beheaded one of the Americans and dragged the other two — a missionary couple — across the jungles for a year and a half. Tilao was eventually tracked down and killed after a long search by the CIA and Filipino military forces.

FEB 18 UPDATE: Reuters reports that a spokesman for the Philippine left-wing group Pamalakaya has “opposed” the movie.

4. In movies, Opus Dei seems to be associated with the bad guys — whether in cheesy fiction like The Da Vinci Code or true stories like Breach. So now, reports Variety, Opus Dei is going to put itself on the good-guy end of the spectrum, by teaming up with Lux Vide to make “a theatrical biopic about Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the onetime secretive Catholic organization’s founder.” Lux Vide’s credits include The Bible Collection (1994-2002), Saint Peter (2005), Pope John Paul II (2005) and many other religious TV-movies. But have they ever done a theatrical film before?

5. IGN.com reports that Summer Glau, of Firefly (2002-2003) and Serenity (2005) fame, is starring in the pilot for The Sarah Connor Chronicles — but as who? Given that she already knows how to play a character who makes her first appearance in the nude and turns out to be something of a killing machine, many fanboys hope she’ll be a Terminator — but perhaps that would be too obvious?

6. You knew George Lucas was going to re-issue the Star Wars movies on DVD again this year, right? The Associated Press, in a story on Hasbro’s upcoming toy projects, says:

Looking ahead, Verrecchia said he expected Star Wars to continue to be a strong performer with Lucas planning a video release for this year’s 30th anniversary, a Star Wars animated TV show next year and a live-action Star Wars TV show in 2009.

7. Variety says Kirstie Alley will star in The Minister of Divine, the American remake of the British sitcom The Vicar of Dibley.

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