movies (12 posts)

Walt Disney Pictures

After recovering from its Speed Racer hangover, Hollywood is hoping to bounce back in a big way with The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

The first Narnia flick was a hit ($65 million opening weekend, nearly $300 million overall), and this one will be, too. Nothing else of great importance opens this week, and after family audiences avoided Speed last weekend, the kids are getting antsy.

Look for Prince Caspian to come in just under $70 million—let's say $68.7 million for opening weekend. This movie will make its real coin overseas, so whatever it rakes in Stateside is pure icing.

What do you think? Am I selling epic battles, Minotaurs and fresh-faced kids short? Or giving them too much credit? Sound off in the comments.

Lucasfilms/Paramount PicturesImage

The Archaeological Institute of America knows Harrison Ford only plays a bullwhip-toting, intrepid scholar on the big screen, right?

Either way, because of what the movie star's role as the iconic Indiana Jones has done for the field, the Boston-based organization has elected Ford to its board of directors.

Understanding the past helps in "dealing with the present and future," Ford said in a statement released by the AIA, which, per its website, "exists to promote archaeological inquiry and public understanding of the material record of the human past worldwide."

The institute's professional members have conducted field research around the globe and have founded research and learning centers in seven countries.

It's unclear what duties Ford will fulfill, but surely even the pros can use refresher courses from time to time on escaping snaky situations and riding an inflatable raft through the snow.

Lionsgate Films

It's really hard to keep track of all the lawsuits that sprung from the loins of Crash, the 2005 Oscar winner for Best Picture, but at least another one has been relegated to the annals of Hollywood history.

Financier Bob Yari, who due to Industry rules was removed as a coproducer on the film, has reached a tentative settlement with the law firm that represented him in two Crash-related suits and then hit him up for nearly $400,000 in fees.

Legal eagles for the firm of Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro filed a motion to dismiss Monday.

Details of the proposed deal were not made available. Yari hired the firm in 2006 when he sued the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to challenge the loss of his production credit. (A judge dismissed the complaint in January 2007.)

The firm fought for Yari again when Crash producers Cathy Schulman (who along with director Paul Haggis did accept a statuette in the film's honor) and Tom Nunan sued him for allegedly withholding profits, and again when Yari sued them for supposedly failing to reimburse him for various investments. All of this back-and-forth litigation is scheduled to go to trial June 30.

Obviously, someone's taking Crash's tangled-web metaphor way too seriously.

Hugh Dillon/WENN

Update:  According to a Fox studio rep, Miami was the official wrap party for Marley & Me, but several weeks of shooting are left to finish in Pennsylvania. As for the reports that John Mayer performed? Never happened, says the rep. "That was a total rumor!"

--------------------------------------------------

If only things were as clear as Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer's budding romance.

While it was reported last week that Jen's new beau performed at the wrap party for her new movie Marley & Me in Miami, a new picture surfaced on Wednesday of costars Owen Wilson and Eric Dane on the movie's set in Philadelphia.

So it seems that though Jen herself may have finished shooting on the movie, production, on the whole, continues.

Which, of course, means she'll have more time to spend with John and, in turn, give us more to write about. Thanks, doll.

Michael Caulfield/WireImage.com

Daniel Day-Lewis tends to bide his time between projects, sometimes waiting as long as five years between Oscar nominations, er, film roles. But Nine could be the magic number this time around.

Variety reports the British thesp is in talks to play the role of a film director dealing with personal and creative demons while simultaneously trying to please the many women in his life—a part that previously belonged to Javier Bardem—in the big-screen adaptation of the Fellini-inspired stage musical Nine.

The British scene-stealer might not seem like the obvious choice to play Guido Contini, but Bardem ultimately decided he was tired out from his other films and all that awards-season triumphing to carry on. No matter that the Spaniard's girlfriend, Penélope Cruz, is still slated to star, along with Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren and Judi Dench.

Chicago visionary Rob Marshall will be directing the Weinstein Co. production. A rep for the studio says no decisions regarding the male lead have been made and that any names out there now are "pure conjecture."

Lucasfilms/Paramount PicturesImage

You never forget your first melting face.

That’s just one of the thrills of Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection, a three-disc set that collects the first three Indy films along with new bonus features, including a close-up look at how the melting faces in Raiders of the Lost Ark came to be.

Our favorite is a short, new introduction that includes archival footage from the filming. In it, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas reveal that Spielberg hoped to make a globe-trotting action-adventure movie that he could shoot fast so he wouldn't go over budget, as he had on his previous film, 1941.

“I was trying to make a movie that was fiscally responsible,” said Spielberg.

Turns out, he did.

Keep Reading

Enfoque/Flynet

Colin Farrell is losin' it—literally!

The Miami Vice star was spotted in Spain while meeting up with some friends for dinner. But from the looks of this picture, it's probably safe to say the one-time beefcake didn't eat much meat...or anything else for that matter.

Word has it, though, that Colin is simply doing the method thing for the drama he's currently shooting titled Triage.

The film finds the 31-year-old actor playing a U.S. photographer whose life spirals downward upon returning home after covering a small war in late-1980s Kurdistan.

Let's just hope they have plenty of food at the wrap party, because somebody's gonna be starving!

Tony Barson/WireImage.com

Cannes is ready for its close-up. The 61st International Film Festival kicks off today and the celebs are pouring in to the French town for all the film-biz fabulousness—including jury member Natalie Portman, who looks like a kid arriving at camp. (The 26-year-old could make a killing endorsing antiaging products, um, if she wasn't so successful at this acting thing.)

Also milling around today are Sean Penn, who heads up the jury panel, Jack Black, promoting Kung Fu Panda, and Julianne Moore, who opened the film fest with her newest movie, Blindness.

And we love 'em all, but we're busy scanning the crowds for Brangelina, who we're assuming will show based on the simple fact that they already live in France. (Hey, it's just a limo ride away.) Plus, she has two movies playing in the festival, Kung Fu Panda and Clint Eastwood's Changeling. Seems like a sure thing, n'est-ce pas?

Goff/INFDaily.com

Emile Hirsch has ditched his agent faster than you can say "box-office flop."

A source tells E! News the 23-year-old actor, who won raves for his performance as society-shunner Chris McCandless in Into the Wild before dumbing down for the widely panned Speed Racer, has fired United Talent Agency's Shari Rosenzweig.

Our insider drew no direct connection between Hirsch's latest career move and the disappointing $18.6 million Speed Racer took in during its megahyped opening weekend (which included a major arse-whooping from the week-old Iron Man), but would only confirm that "he is not represented by UTA anymore. He has dropped his agent."

But it's not as if UTA didn't keep Hirsch working during the seven years he was there. Aside from his haunting turn in Into the Wild, his credits also include roles in the porn-star-neighbor comedy The Girl Next Door, the true-crime drama Alpha Dog, the skateboarding romp Lords of Dogtown, and the indie ensemble The Air I Breathe.

—Reporting by Whitney English