What
Comes
After
‘11’?
Having banked more than 1,750 large,
the friends of Danny Ocean have a busy year ahead.
Last
year’s all-star remake of the 1960 Rat Pack casino heist caper
“Ocean’s Eleven” played its plot straight, no chaser
– something the original didn’t even bother to do. The result:
more than $175 million in domestic box office by late January.
Are
they in or out? When it comes to veterans of Steven Soderbergh films,
the answer is usually “in.” “Full Frontal,”
the director’s latest, was shot super-fast in digital video.
It’s due March 8 from Miramax and features previous Soderberghians
Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener (“Out of Sight”),
Brandon Keener (“Ocean’s Eleven”), Nicky Katt (“The
Limey,” “Rules of Engagement”) and Laurent Schwaar
(“Ocean’s Eleven”).
Another
frequent player for Soderbergh is his producing partner George Clooney,
who will next be spotted toplining “Welcome To Collinwood.”
The comedy, set in Cleveland, is about a bumbling group of guys, led
by a safecracker and a boxer, who set out to burglarize a pawn shop.
Written and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, it costars Sam Rockwell
(“Heist”), Andrew Davoli (“The Yards”), Isaiah
Washington (“Exit Wounds”), William H. Macy (“Focus”),
Luis Guzman (“Traffic”), Jennifer Esposito (“Don’t
Say a Word”), Art Oughton (“Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”),
Gabrielle Union (“The Brothers”), Ann Zupa (“Jawbreaker”),
and Blane Pate. Warner Bros. has the timelock set for September 13.
Clooney makes his feature directorial debut with “Confessions
Of A Dangerous Mind,” a dark comedy based on the “memoir”
of “Dating Game” producer Chuck Barris. Barris claimed in
the book that the CIA used him to kill KGB agents when he chaperoned
winning contestants to exotic locales. Charlie Kaufman (“Being
John Malkovich,” “Human Nature”) turned the tale into
a screenplay. Becoming well-known for working again and again with
people he’s comfortable with, Clooney has quite naturally hired
himself to play Barris’s CIA contact. Also rejoining the George
Clooney Experience are Sam Rockwell as Barris, Julia Roberts in the
major role of Patricia Watson, and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as game
show contestants. Drew Barrymore, Rutger Hauer, Artie Lange and Fred
Savage also star. Miramax is aiming for a Nov. 22 debut.
Continuing the repertory company theme, Clooney will next reteam with
the Coen brothers on “Intolerable Cruelty.’’
He plays a Hollywood divorce lawyer who finds himself the focus of
revenge by a client’s ex-wife. Considering the woman scorned
is Catherine Zeta-Jones, romance naturally ensues. The Coens rewrote
the original screenplay by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone.
The production has a complex and tangled history, in a Kevin Baconian
sense. Soderbergh vet Zeta-Jones came in after her “America’s
Sweethearts” costar Julia Roberts – who had come back to
the project to work with Clooney again after considering it with Richard
Gere around the time of “Runaway Bride” – dropped out.
The Coens came to the project after their most recent project fell
through (“To the White Sea” with Brad Pitt). Universal will
make a final decree some time in 2003.
Andy
Garcia goes from playing a slick casino owner to someone with more
serious responsibilities in “Basic.” It’s a
Sony thriller about a DEA agent who is recruited by an old friend
– a military base commander (Garcia) – to investigate the
disappearance of several recruits and their famed drill instructor
during a training exercise. John McTiernan (“Rollerball”)
directed from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt. John Travolta plays
the agent, Samuel L. Jackson (in his first pairing with Travolta since
“Pulp Fiction”) the instructor. Connie Nielsen (“Gladiator”),
Giovanni Ribisi (“Heaven”), Clayne Crawford (“A Walk
to Remember”), Taye Diggs (“The Way of the Gun”), Cristian
de la Fuente (TV’s “Family Law”) and Brian Van Holt
(“Black Hawk Down”) costar. Two … four … six …
eight ... It doesn’t have a release date.
None of Garcia’s other projects have a release date either. “Avenging
Angelo” is a romantic comedy-actioner about a mobster’s
daughter who tracks down her father’s killer with the help of
the dead man’s handsome bodyguard. Martyn Burke (“Gross
Anatomy”) directed from a screenplay by Will Aldis and Steve
Mackall. Sylvester Stallone (“Driven”), Madeleine Stowe
(“Impostor,” “We Were Soldiers”), Anthony Quinn
(“Hannibal”), Billy Gardell and Harry Van Gorkum (“One
Night at McCool’s”) are Garcia’s costars in the Warner
Bros. film.
“The Man From Elysian Fields” was bought just before
Sundance. The drama is about a struggling writer and family man who
gets involved with the wife of a world-renowned author via a male
escort agency. Directed by George Hickenlooper (“The Low Life”)
from a screenplay by Phillip Jayson Lasker (“TV’s “The
Golden Girls”), the film stars Garcia, Mick Jagger (“Bent”),
Julianna Margulies (“What’s Cooking?”), Anjelica Huston
(“The Royal Tenenbaums”), Olivia Williams (“The Body”)
and James Coburn (“Snow Dogs”). IDP hasn’t set a date.
We should also say something about “The Unsaid,”
which is already playing in foreign territories. A psychological thriller
starring Garcia as a psychiatrist who must unearth the grim circumstances
of a troubled adolescent’s past, it was directed by Tom McLoughlin
(“Sometimes They Come Back”) from a screenplay by Christopher
Murphey and Miguel Tejada-Flores. Garcia’s costars include Vincent
Kartheiser (“Crime and Punishment in Suburbia”), Linda Cardellini
(“Legally Blonde”), Sam Bottoms (“Snide and Prejudice”),
August Schellenberg (“Free Willy 3”), Chelsea Field (“Flipper”),
Brendan Fletcher (“Trixie”), Teri Polo (“Domestic Disturbance”)
and Trevor Blumas. It has yet to say anything about a U.S. distributor.
Having
put on a Cockney accent for “Eleven,” Don Cheadle migrates
next to “The United States of Leland.” It’s
a drama about a teacher at a juvenile detention facility who must
untangle the mystery of 15-year-old Leland, who murdered an autistic
child and claims that he committed the act out of sadness. Matthew
Ryan Hoge makes his directing debut from his own script. Ryan Gossling
(“Remember the Titans”) plays Leland. Jena Malone (“Life
as a House”), Maria Arcé (“Next Friday”), Michelle
Williams (“Dick”) and Chris Klein (“We Were Soldiers”)
also star. It began filming January 28 and has no distributor.
Matt
Damon gets out of “Ocean’s Eleven” and manages to make
a movie that doesn’t include an Affleck. “The Bourne
Identity” is a thriller about a man who washes, bullet-ridden,
out of the Mediterranean Sea with no memories – and comes to
learn that his face has been altered with plastic surgery and that
the flesh of his hip contains surgically-implanted microfilm. It’s
based on the novel by Robert Ludlum (“The Holcroft Covenant”).
Doug Liman (“Swingers,” “Go”) directed from a
screenplay by W. Blake Herron (“A Texas Funeral”). Franka
Potente (“Blow”), Chris Cooper (“The Patriot”),
Brian Cox (“The Affair of the Necklace”), Julia Stiles (“The
Business of Strangers”), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agabaje (“Ace
Ventura: When Nature Calls”), Judy Parfitt (“Ever After”)
and Clive Owen (“Gosford Park”) costar. Universal unmasks
it June 14.
Returning to form, Damon costars with Ben Affleck in “The
Third Wheel.” The romantic comedy is about a young man who
finds his carefully planned date with the girl of his dreams derailed
by the con man he cannot seem to elude. Jordan Brady (“Dill Scallion”)
directed from a screenplay by Jay Lacopo. Luke Wilson (“The Royal
Tenenbaums”), Denise Richards (“Valentine”), Greg Pitts
(“Panic”), and David Koechner (“Whatever It Takes”)
star. Miramax puts it on the road sometime this year.
Damon joins up with Ben’s younger brother Casey in “Gerry.”
Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting,” “Finding Forrester”)
directed this mostly improvised drama about a pair of con men stranded
in the desert. After its premiere at Sundance, it was picked up for
fall 2002 distribution by Th!nkFilm. 
