Movie & TV News

The Shadow
The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Columbia
Pictures and Sam Raimi have picked up the screen rights to "The Shadow." It had been reported last week that the project was to include other Street & Smith characters, but this more official announcement only carries the single character as the subject of the film. Accoridng to IMDb: "He (Raimi) wanted to adapt and direct The Shadow (1994), but was denied the rights to do it. Instead, he created his own superhero with his film Darkman (1990)." Siavash Farahani is still listed as adapting the Walter B. Givson character into a screenplay, with Raimi, Josh Donen producing through their Buckaroo Entertainment company with Michael Uslan also producing.

Since Walker Left

Jessica Goldberg will write the adaptation of "Since Walker Left." The film is a remake of the 2003 French Julie Bertuccelli film "Since Otar Left." Roy Lee and Doug Davison's Vertigo Entertainment is producing for Focus Features. The story tells of the lives of a mother and daughter whose only joy comes from the regular letters sent to them from the family's adored son, Walker. When the daughter finds out that Walker has suddenly died, her attempts to conceal the truth from her mother changes their lives forever. The project is set in Tennessee and New York.

Time-Travel TV

Fox and Steven Spielberg are developing as as-yet-unnamed time-travel television series says Variety. Scott Gemmill will write the hourlong time-travel drama, shich has a romantic storyline about two young American physicists in World War II who discover a way to travel to the future. They hop between 2007 and the 1940s in trying to aid the war effort, but upset the space-time continuum. After one of the men enlists a woman in 2007 to help him adjust to culture shock the two develop a relationship.

Sin City 2

Widely reported earlier, for the sequel (AKA "A Dame to Kill For") Robert and Frank Miller were interested in Angelina Jolie in the lead role. But, at that time Jolie was pregnant which would push back production, so Rodriguez started filming "Grindhouse" with Quentin Tarantino instead. Jolie spoke to ComingSoon.net and said: "We talked about it and I read the comic. I don't think the film is being made at this moment. When it's actually going to be made I'm sure we'll talk about it. It was a funny thing, because the idea came to me when I was pregnant . . . It was this idea of this sexy, violent and loud [character] . . . I thought maybe after I'm pregnant it would be nice to do." In the graphic novel the character Jolie would play is an ex-lover of Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen) who manipulates men through her good looks and her supposed innocence.

Jackboots On Whitehall.
England's Gerry Anderson pioneered the syle of marionette filming that we saw lately used in comedies like "Team America." Now the British have reclaimed the format in the World War II comedy spoof "Jackboots On Whitehall." With specially designed GI Joe-type action figures as their characters, the $2 million-budgeted movie shows what would have happened had Germany won the Battle of Britain but were defeated by the Scots at the border. The voice talent includes Alan Cumming as Hitler, Tom Wilkinson as Goebbels, Richard O'Brien as Himmler, and Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill. Swipe Films has already begun recording the vocals, with principal photography is to start next March.

Rickman Joins Todd
Screen Daily says that Alan Rickman will play Judge Turpin in the Tim Burton filming of "Sweeney Todd." He joins Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen in the cast of the bloody tale of the wrongfully imprisoned barber in Victorian England who sets out to seek revenge on the judge who imprisoned him. Production starts early next year for a late 2007 release.

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