Just a few entertainment briefs as we deal with last minute stuff:
§ The Y THE LAST MAN movie has a writer and director, D.J. Caruso and Carl Ellsworth, whose previous credits include DISTURBIA. Caruso will direct while Ellsworth writes.
The comic, created by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, centers on Yorick, an escape artist who is the last survivor of a mysterious plague that has killed every single male mammal in the world. With his male pet monkey, he sets out to find what might have wiped out the world’s male chromosomes.
Mason Novick is exec producing.
Caruso and Ellsworth became hot properties with “Disturbia,” the teen-skewing “Rear Window”-like thriller made for $20 million that has grossed about $80 million.
§ Also over at WB, Jonah Hex may be riding to the screen.
Warner Bros. Pictures is saddling up to bring DC Comics’ Western anti-hero comic book “Jonah Hex” to the big screen, with filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor on board to adapt. Andrew Lazar is producing via his Mad Chance Prods., as is Akiva Goldsman.
The filmmakers are not making a straight-ahead Western but plan to develop the character with some of the supernatural overtones in the hopes of creating a franchise. Greg Silverman and Elishia Holmes are overseeing for Warners. Gregory Noveck is overseeing for DC. Neveldine and Taylor wrote and directed “Crank,” which starred Jason Statham.
Meanwhile purported Watchmen casting is leaking out, and it’s not quite the star-studded affair originally seen — which might be just as well, becuase the BO potential of an R-Rated superhero movie has always been WATCHMEN’s Achilles heel.
The IESB can exclusively report that the role of Adrian Veidt/Oxymandias in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen has been given to Matthew Goode. Goode joins the likes of Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhatton, Patrick Wilson as The Night Owl (both confirmed by our source), Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre (LR) and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach.
Goode is an English actor who studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London and has starred in a few films including Match Point, The Lookout and most recently Brideshead Revisited with Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon.
§ Finally, pop culture site and old school website UGO has been sold to Hearst:
On Tuesday morning, Hearst was expected to announce the acquisition of UGO Networks, a collection of Web sites targeting young men interested in video games, sports and pictures of hot girls. UGO claims 11 million unique visitors a month. Terms of the deal, which took two years to come to fruition, were not disclosed. Forbes estimates the acquisition to be in the neighborhood of $100 million.
New York City-based UGO is one of the last Web 1.0 holdouts to have a successful outcome. Sites with video and user-generated content, commonly referred to as Web 2.0, have been taking over. Most startups from the Web 1.0 era either went on to great success (Amazon, eBay, Yahoo) or were decimated at the turn of the century (Pets.com, Etoys, Webvan). And the few companies that survived raised such ridiculous amounts of money that just about any exit is sure to be an unprofitable one.
Wait. Wait. Jude Law has all but said that he would be in Watchmen for FREE. But they somehow managed to NOT cast him. Oh, this bodes well.
Jackie Earle Hailey – now why didn’t I think of that one??
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Coat
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