BOP Daily News
May 3, 2004
The spirit of BOP News lives on in
This is So Last Week,
our pop culture week-in-review,
presented in a pleasing quiz form.
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What do strong performances in many small independent films earn you these days? It earns you a starring role in a big budget Hollywood action film, of course, and in this case, the actor is Scarlett Johansson and the film is Mission: Impossible 3. Johansson won’t be the only femme fatale in the film as Carrie-Ann Moss, she of Matrix fame, had already signed on to the project last month. With the first sequel being so lame, hopefully this film won’t be Lost in Repetition. Ha! See what happened there? Kinda turned it back full circle….Anyway, moving on…
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Just when you thought the comic book-based movie well had gone dry, Marvel come out with the announcement that it has greenlighted a project based on their Black Widow property. To be directed by X-Men writer David Hayter, who can be seen as the lead in that wonderful bit of cinema called The Guyver, The Black Widow will be based on one of Marvel’s C-grade supporting characters. A Russian-trained spy, Natasha Romanova leaves the good ol’ U.S.S.R. after the cold war is over and heads to New York where she works as a freelance mercenary known as The Black Widow. If the character sounds a bit like a Bond girl that’s because that’s basically what she is, except that she wears skin-tight spandex to work. Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly a huge difference but still, we’re disappointed they didn’t decide to clone Pussy Galore.
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The controversial Sin City has rounded off its cast by adding Nick Stahl to its stable. Stahl, best known for playing John Connor in Terminator 3, will join Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jaime King, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood and Brittany Murphy in the gritty noir crime-drama to be directed by Robert Rodriguez. The controversy surrounding the film is not around the content itself, though we pretty much expect all the female leads to play prostitutes (maybe even Elijah Wood too) but is actually focused on Rodriguez’s decision to leave the Director’s Guild in order to direct the project. Due to a rule within the Director’s union, only one person is credited as a director of a film unless the two people listed as Directors are brothers. Rodriguez plans to have three directors on the project and resigned from the Guild in order to give credit to everyone involved. Rodriguez must be admired for his actions and hopefully he can find success with this endeavor. Next up for Rodriguez is a sit down with NHLPA boss Bob Goodenow.
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Roland Emmerich is eyeing Anthem as a possible next project for him. With the first draft co-written by him and his long-time producing partner Dean Devlin, the project is being developed for Columbia Pictures. The story is that of an impeached President who refuses to physically leave the White House and an FBI agent who rushed to find the truth behind a conspiracy that seeks to change the U.S. Constitution. Emmerich’s career has been a seesaw of sorts, with hits such as Independence Day and The Patriot and bombs such as Godzilla and Eight-Legged Freaks, but is looking to rebound with this year’s The Day After Tomorrow, the mother of all disaster flicks. The film will feature disastrous floods, 400 foot tsunamis and Armageddon level earthquakes; otherwise known as the Los Angeles Lakers locker room.
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Nick Hornby fans, rejoice! Columbia has optioned the movie rights to Hornby’s latest novel How to Be Good. If you are not familiar with Hornby’s work (and if you aren’t, don’t let some of the BOP staffers know ‘cause if they find out then somebody’s gonna get hurt real bad) he is the writer of High Fidelity and About a Boy, the latter of which won 2002’s Calvin Award for Best Film. To be produced by Laura Ziskin, How to Be Good is a comedy that tells the story of a doctor whose feelings of superiority towards her angry, cynical husband are undermined after she has an affair and he decides to live the good and pious way of life. After her husband’s sudden and unexpected transformation, the woman begins to pine for his old self. Is Mel Gibson too easy a pick to star in this film?
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"It's not cheating if you're in a different area code."
Box Office Prophets offers quality, reliable news about the entertainment industry. BOP is also entertaining. To that end, please be advised that some content in this column is intended to be humorous and should not be considered factual.
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