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Get Up, Stand Up, Jonathan Demme
Demme Shot the Sheriff: Jonathan Demme, who notably directed the Neil Young documentary Heart of Gold, will direct Shangri-La’s Bob Marley documentary. He replaces Martin Scorsese, who had to pull out owing to scheduling conflicts. Power was transferred in the traditional manner: the ceremonial handing over of movie camera and bong. [HR]
Marvel Runs Away: After years of ignoring its most teen-friendly and overall awesome comics title, Marvel has finally decided to bring Runaways to the big screen. Brian K. Vaughan’s series follows a group of teens who discover their parents are supervillains and try to make up for their parents’ misdeeds. Vaughan will write the screenplay for the project, which sadly will not come to theaters anytime before 2011, when its entire current audience is too old. [HR]
A Langella for All Seasons: Frank Langella, who won a third Tony for his recent Frost/Nixon performance, will headline the Broadway revival of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, opening in October. Doubt’s Doug Hughes will direct. No other cast yet, but expect every other part, including King Henry VIII, to be played by Langella’s spare Tony statues. It’s funny ‘cause he has so many? [Variety, Playbill]
Kassovitz, Man of Action: French actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine) has announced two upcoming big-budget projects. MNP, an end-of-the-world space station story, will start shooting in 2011. Before that comes Rebellion, the story of French commandos who battled natives in the South Pacific, featuring an “all-French A-list cast,†which by definition must include Audrey Tautou, Catherine Deneuve, and Jerry Lewis. [HR]
Penn’s Last Equation: Sascha Penn will adapt Stuart Gibbs’ debut novel The Last Equation for Lionsgate. Story centers on Einstein’s fictional last equation that could potentially solve all the world’s energy problems, if only it didn’t also simplify atomic theory so much that anyone could make nuclear bombs out of toasters, which is why Einstein hid it somewhere. The government enlists a fugitive criminal and a math genius to find the equation before it falls into the wrong hands. Einstein! When will you learn that “under your mattress†is a bad hiding place for Armageddon-causing formulae and/or pornography?! [HR]