Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming “Machete,” based on his trailer in “Grindhouse,” and starring Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro and Steven Seagal, has been picked up by Sony Pictures, for distribution next year. Rodriguez wrote the script, and is co-directing with his long time editor Ethan Maniquis. The trailer was fun, but can they make an entire front-to-back entertaining film out of this one? Let’s hope so. The hit Toronto documentary “The Art of the Steal” has also been picked up, by new label Sundance Selects, and will be released next year. The film focuses on the struggle for control of a collection of post-Impressionist and early modern art, valued at billions of dollars.
– Columbia Pictures has acquired the rights to Lucy Prebble’s play “Enron,” which is currently playing in a sold-out run at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and will move to Broadway next year. Laura Ziskin (“Spider-Man”) will produce, and the 28-year-old Prebble, an excellent playwright who also writes Showtime’s dreadful “The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl” series, will adapt her own play, which follows the downfall of the Texan corporation, and has opened to sensational reviews. It’s unclear as to whether the play’s cast, which includes Samuel West (“Howard’s End”) and Tim Piggott-Smith (“V For Vendetta”), will reprise their roles in the movie, which is unconnected to Alex Gibney’s 2005 documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room.”
John Malkovich, Scott Glenn and Dylan Walsh (“Nip/Tuck”) have joined the terribly-named “Secretariat,” which stars Diane Lane as the owner of the titular horse, which won the 1973 Triple Crown. Malkovich will play the horse’s trainer, a former jockey (Can you imagine a less likely jockey than John Malkovich, except for maybe Michael Clarke Duncan?), Glenn will play the former owner of the horse, who loses it in a coin toss, and Walsh will play Lane’s husband. Randall Wallace (“We Were Soldiers”), will direct, and, with any luck, the film will get an “Alien vs. Predator”-style sequel in “Secretariat vs. Seabiscuit.”
– As expected, the Producer’s Guild of America have followed the Academy’s nakedly ratings-chasing lead and announced that they will name ten nominees for the Darryl F Zanuck producer of the year award in January.
