Odd Casting for Van Helsing Reboot and Oldboy Remake, Anchorman 2 Details and Alan Partridge Set for Movie
Tom Cruise is set to fill Hugh Jackman’s boots in a reboot of Van Helsing, reports E! Online. Cruise is no stranger to gun-slinging action, but rarely appears in horror-themed work. It’s a very odd choice of casting, but this will be an interesting comparison to his portrayal as the vampire Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, killing vampires instead of being one.
AV Club reports that in a similarly strange act of casting Sharlto Copley (known for portrayed Wikus van de Merwe in District 9 or Murdock in The A-Team movie) will play the villain in Spike Lee’s US remake of the iconic 2003 Korean thriller Oldboy. Copley is great at playing on-the-edge characters, so hopefully can offer a great performance in Yoo Ji-tae’s original role. Offers were made (but rejected) to Colin Firth, Clive Owen and Christian Bale before Copley picked up the role of a US counterpart to Lee Woo-jin. Copley joins Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) and the magnificent Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) in the cast list. The film is due to begin production in September. At least this cast and crew list was not as strange a choice as the original possibility of Will Smith starring and Steven Speilberg directing the remake of the deeply dark thriller.
Anchorman 2 plans to delve into world of the 24-hour news channel, according to Empire.
Director and writer, Adam McKay, said of the current script:
“We’ve done about two per cent! We’ve got five pages of story notes and chunks of story. We’re holing up writing for the next three months.”
With regards to the plot:
“We know these guys never deal well with change, and the good thing is that there’s a big blast of change coming, according to the regular timeline. We’re going to be throwing a lot of innovation at them, and they’re not going to handle it well. It’s right when all the news started changing with the 24-hours news cycle in ’78 or ’79, all of a sudden, local news stations diversified and had Latino anchors and African-American anchors, and any time you’re talking about diversity and the Action News team, that’s always fun to deal with.”
With a protagonist who can only identity with the word ‘diversity’ as “an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era”, it seems that learning to accept women in the news station was just the first step of Ron Burgundy’s social education.
Comedy fans – particularly Norfolkians like me – will be pleased to know that the classic British comedy character, Norfolk’s very own socially awkward radio host Alan Partridge (played by Steve Coogan) is getting his very own movie, Norwich Evening News reports. Comedy writer Armando Iannucci confirmed that the film is set for release in 2013, and tells that:
“It’s just about all come together now, so that’ll be shot later in the year. At the moment it’s ‘The Alan Partridge Movie’ but that’s just a working title.”
The movie will be shot in Norwich, the heart of Norfolk, Iannucci explains:
“We’re not going mad and doing an Alan-goes-to-Hollywood thing. It’s very much Alan in Norwich. Putting Norwich on the map. Well, somebody’s map.”
News sources: E! Online, AV Club, Empire, Norwich Evening News.
Featured image source: ScreenCrush