News – From Around The Web

GET YOUR THRILLER ON
Scribe Dana Stevens will write the thriller, “The Au Pair,” for Ghost House Pictures. It’s about a woman who takes a nanny job in the Hamptons only to have some bad shit start happening. The script will be adapted from the book, “The Sitter,” by R.L. Stine. Ghost House is Sam Raimi’s company. Stevens scripted City of Angels and Life or Something Like it.

BIGELOW
Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, is finally getting her next movie with Locker scripter Mark Boal ready to roll. The super serious premise, centering around crime in the border zone between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, is attracting some big name stars who want to work with the new Oscar queen, according to Deadline Hollywood. Yes, Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp may be playing the leads. This is critical, as one of the main reasons Locker only made 20 million bucks was because it didn’t have any big names. If Bigelow can pull this off, her next film won’t suffer the same fate.

GRAVITY
It sounds like poor Alfonso Cuarón is getting desperate to find a lead for what I’m hoping will be one of the most amazing technical feats ever put on film, his story about a female astronaut who gets trapped up in space after an explosion.  Jolie said no. Portman’s decided to pass. Now they’re going to Sandra Bullock. Bullock will get the movie made, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Cuaron would not be happy using her.

YUCATAN
I was reading over at Slash-Film about this secret movie idea Steve McQueen had before he died called, “Yucatan,” an epic treasure hunter heist film. I guess McQueen had written over 1700 pages worth of notes before he died. Warner Brothers has been trying to put it together ever since and they’ve finally hired writer Anthony Peckham, who wrote the first Sherlock Holmes, to write it as a vehicle for Robert Downey Jr.

TIME MACHINE
Always nice to see writers make the hop from their laptops to the sound stage, and the writers of Hot Tub Time Machine have done just that. Sean Anders and John Morris will direct the script “We’re The Millers.” Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, who wrote Wedding Crashers wrote the original script. Millers does have a funny premise. It involves a pot dealer creating a fake family to transfer a large amount of pot across the Mexican border.

RAY
Risky Business reports that perennial script doctor Billy Ray, who took a pass at Source Code , is stepping into the director’s chair for his third film, a remake of the Argentinian thriller, “The Secret in Their Eyes” for Warner Bros. (Warner Brothers again!). The film won the foreign language Oscar in March, and is about a retired criminal investigator haunted by an unresolved rape from 30 years ago.

HIGH RISE CHAOS
Richard Stanley is taking a crack at the script for director Vincenzo Natalie’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel, High Rise. Vincenzo is the director of cult favorite “Cube,” as well as “Splice.” Reading the book’s synopsis kind of makes my head hurt but as best I can tell, the story is about the residents of a high rise who engage in some sort of multi-story war, I guess Lord Of The Flies with adults in a building? Collider has more on the story.