The legendary music director D.A. Pennebaker (“Don’t Look Back,” “Ziggy Stardust And The Spider From Mars”) is set to direct a live webcast of The National’s May 15th benefit concert at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music. The show will be a benefit for Red Hot Organization and concert will be available online for a month. It will be the first time Pennebaker, who will be co-directing with this wife and frequent collaborator Chris Hegedus will be filming show that will be immediately broadcast. They will also unspool a short film in before the concert starts.
Alexandre Aja and Dimension really want you (and by “you” we mean “horny guys aged between 18-22”) to see “Piranha 3D” so they’ve launched a viral site called Wild Wild Girls in order to get potential viewers, um, “excited.” The site is basically a note “parody” of Girls Gone Wild but considering the copious amounts nudity (this is seriously NSFW and is pretty much a softcore site) and no information actually about the movie its supposed promoting (except that Jerry O’Connell shows up briefly), this really just seems like a way for marketing dudes to party with young girls for an afternoon, shoot some footage and call it work. Gross. No wonder Eli Roth stopped by.
Patrick Dempsey has joined Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Josh Duhamel and Ken Jeong for “Transformers 3.” Apparently he will play Fox’s boss in a role that is “significant to the plot” besting franchise vet Josh Duhamel who keeps showing up for these things in the same boring, interchangeable part.
Ridley Scott says “Robin Hood” is just the beginning. The director see his forthcoming film as a prequel and already has a sequel mapped out in his head. “We’ve set it up for 17 years [later], with King John being on the throne,” Scott explained. “He will be forced to sign the Magna Carta.” Because if there is anything audiences are demanding, it’s more movies about the Magna Carta. He told MTV that the proposed sequel would find “Robin and friends would be rebelling against John’s attempts to proclaim the people’s rights.” So basically it would more or less be the first film all over again.
Ryan Gosling will be lending his voice to the forthcoming documentary “ReGeneration” by director Phillip Montgomery. Gosling will narrate the film that will focus on “the causes of rampant cynicism in today’s youth and their apathetic view towards social and political causes.” Y’know, like, whatever.
Did Production Weekly tweet too early? They have since removed a tweet that reported Jeremy Irons joining Lajos Koltai’s (“Evening,” “Fateless”) upcoming “The Master Of Farnow” with Natalie Portman apparently reading for a part (though, now that its deleted, maybe not?). The project, an “erotic tale of love and deceit among wealthy families,” is based on a 1906 German novella by Schwuele Tagem and has been in the works for a while, and at one point had Sebastian Koch (“The Lives Of Others”) set to star.
Emily Deschanel will star in the indie drama “The Perfect Family” alongside Kathleen Turner and co-starring Jason Ritter, Michael McGrady and Richard Chamberlain. The film is about “a devoutly Catholic wife and mother (Turner) who has been nominated for one of the church’s top awards. She goes about trying to prove she has the “perfect” family, refusing to accept them for who they are. Deschanel plays the daughter, a successful lawyer who is a lesbian. The daughter, who is five months pregnant, struggles when it comes time to telling her mother the truth. Meanwhile, the son (Ritter) has just left his wife for an older woman, while the husband (McGrady) is a recovering alcoholic. Chamberlain plays the monsignor.”
Adam Shankman (“Hairspray,” “Bedtime Stories”) sure is excited for the “Bye, Bye Birdie” remake he’s producing, but are you? The director/producer hit Twitter to tell his followers “just read bye bye birdie remake we are producing for Sony. its FANTASTIC!!! totally fresh and current.” And for anyone worried about the 1963 classic with Janet Leigh, Dick Van Dyke and Ann-Margaret being used as toilet paper, Shankman says “2 all bbb doubters: I am always faithful, loving &respectful 2 the classics. Always. Wouldnt damage the materials essence. Not ever.” TTYL.
Dimension has a new twist on making horror movies on the cheap: don’t show the audience anything! The studio is set to develop “The Mummy Archives” which is being described as a more “artful and modestly budgeted” (ie. shaky cam and cheap; budget is around $5 million) of the staggeringly dumb Brendan Fraser franchise. The film will “focus on several young people who are haunted by a mummy curse, with the action playing out very much in the unseen realm, as both the audience and the characters frequently experience the effects of the curse without seeing it explicitly.” The Weinsteins are still batting directors names around to find someone who will helm what they hope will be their own “Paranormal Activity.”
–Written by Kevin Jagernauth