News You Can't Use

From Cinema Blend.com

Clint Eastwood has come a long way from the rough-and-tumble action and Westerns star we all first loved. Now he’s Oscar’s favorite person in the world, and is busy directing prestige projects and taking small roles in them rather than kicking ass and taking names.

…Or is he? Variety announced yesterday that Eastwood would be directing and starring in Gran Torino, a movie set for release this December but with absolutely no plot details. All we had to go on was the fact that a Gran Torino is a 1972 Ford car, kind of a classic of the era (you can see more images of it here.)

Now Ain’t It Cool News has a scoop on the plot, and it may be a dream come true for Eastwood fans. Because what do Clint Eastwood and the 1970s mean to most people? That’s right, Dirty Harry.

http://www.cinemablend.com/news.php?cid=35

--Sallis Novel To Be Filmed

20 March 2008 Copyright Empire Online
Marshall Set To Drive With Jackman
Source: Variety

Although there was some disappointment over the performance of his latest movie Doomsday in the US, director Neil Marshall is hopping right back in to the driving seat. Or at least he'll be putting Hugh Jackman in the driving seat.

Marshall has signed a deal with Universal to direct Jackman in Drive, an adaptation of a book by James Sallis. Jackman will play a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man in heists. His already quite exciting life gains a new edge when he discovers that there's a contract out for his life.

Marshall tells Variety that he plans to shoot this by summer, which probably means that it's going into production before Sacrilege, a Western horror that he also recently set up at Universal.

--Heavy Metal Lives!
From Daily Variety

Par, Fincher put pedal to 'Metal'
Eastman, Miller to direct animated segments
By MICHAEL FLEMING

Paramount Pictures will make an animated film inspired by the '70s sci-fi fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, with director David Fincher spearheading the project.

"Heavy Metal" will be stamped by the erotic and violent storylines and images that remain the trademark of a magazine that debuted in the U.S. in 1977. The mag introduced the works of American artists and writers such as Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison and H.R. Giger.

The film will consist of eight or nine individual animated segments, each of which will be directed by a different helmer.

Fincher will direct one of the segments; Kevin Eastman, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" co-creator who is now owner and publisher of Heavy Metal, will direct another. So will Tim Miller, whose Blur Studios will handle the animation for what is being conceived as an R-rated, adult-themed feature.