the industry

As Usual, Cate Blanchett Making Everyone Else Look Bad

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Stop Cate Blanchett Before She Accomplishes Again!: Cate Blanchett will serve as co-artistic director of the 2008 season at the Sydney Theater Company. In addition to appearing in the company’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses cycle, she will direct The Year of Magical Thinking. She will also sew the company’s costumes, sweep out the theater afterward, and ensure the company’s continued international profile through the force of her worldwide fame. [Variety]

Hollywood Pinheads Already Plundering the Late Eighties: Dimension Films is developing a remake of the 1987 Clive Barker horror hit Hellraiser with French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo set to direct. Should Hellraiser succeed, Dimension hopes to follow up with remakes of Scream, Hostel Part 2, and Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood. [HR]

Eastwood Fills Out Cast of Changeling: John Malkovich, Amy Ryan, Jeffrey Donovan, and Colm Feore join Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s The Changeling. Pic, based on a true story of police corruption in the twenties, is astonishingly not a remake of the 1980 horror film. [HR]

Bratt Gets Cleaner: A&E lures Benjamin Bratt to star in new drama pilot The Cleaner, about a former drug addict who forms a team to help people escape their addictions. We assume Bratt gets people off drugs through sheer gorgeousness. Like, people see his sparkling eyes, chiseled jaw, and broad, manly chest, and are all, “Ima get off drugs.†[HR]

2008’s Sexiest Cast: Distributor The Works picks up rights to Closing the Ring, a Richard Attenborough film starring Christopher Plummer, Neve Campbell, Shirley MacLaine, Pete Postlethwaite, and Mischa Barton, described by Variety as a “time-trip romancer.†Um … who exactly among this cast is doing the romancing? Do you see a combo you like? [Variety]

Women’s Project Announces: The new season at the Women’s Project includes Sand, by Trista Baldwin, directed by Daniella Topol, and friend of Vulture Catherine Trieschmann’s crooked, directed by Liz Diamond. Thus is brought to a triumphant end our quest to see the name of someone with whom we have eaten cheese fries in the Industry’s exciting highlighter font. [NYT]

Godspell Returns to Broadway: Hoping to inspire another generation of unendurable high-school and church-youth-group productions, producer Adam Epstein will bring Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell back to Broadway in summer 2008. [Playbill]

Klugman Gets Some Sunshine: Jack Klugman reunites with Neil Simon when he joins Paul Dooley in the George Street Playhouse’s revival of The Sunshine Boys, Simon’s 1972 comedy about two aging vaudevillians. This will be the least cutting-edge piece of entertainment made available to the public in 2008. [Playbill]