Mamma Mia! ABBA Reunites for Film Premiere
Don’t pull out the polyester and platforms just yet, folks. It was just for a movie premiere.
For the first time in 22 years, all four ex-members of ABBA appeared together at the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.
The Swedish pop/disco quartetBenny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskogdidn’t perform, but throngs of fans went wild at the sight of all four together again in Stockholm.
They were joined on the red carpet and theater balcony by the stars of the soon-to-be released film. Mamma Mia! is a big-screen adaptation of the highly successful musical featuring ABBA’s biggest hits, including “Dancing Queen,” “Money, Money, Money” and “Take a Chance on Me.”
The foursome shot to fame in the mid-’70s and performed together publicly for the last time in 1986. In 2000, they turned down $1 billion to reunite for a concert tour.
Why Hollywood Can’t Make a Grand Theft Auto Movie
Because everyone has been wondering, Nikki Finke explains why Hollywood probably won’t make Grand Theft Auto: The Movie. In its first week, Grand Theft Auto IV sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide and grossed over $500 million, more than most movies make theatrically. So it seems only logical that Hollywood would be interested in bringing the the controversial video game series to the mainstream. As it turns out, Fox Atomic actually owns the rights to “Grand Theft Auto”, but not a film based on the game. Atomic is developing a remake of the Ron Howard directed / Roger Corman produced film with the same name from 1977. And by “developing”, we mean that it is one of hundreds of projects that Fox Atomic has sitting around waiting for a screenwriter.
And I’ve never heard this before, but Finke claims that a legal settlement dictates that Fox can’t make a video game out of the Ron Howard film, and more importantly, Rockstar isn’t allowed to make a feature film based on their video game series. And as much as fans of the game would love to see a big screen movie, I’m not sure that it could capture the free-roaming magic of the game. Besides, many aspects of the game series are closely inspired by the classic mob films. I even remember reading interviews with Rockstar where they admit this obvious fact. What’s to stop a big screen adaptation of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or Grand Theft Auto 4 from feeling like a Scarface rip-off?
Casting Couch: Carrey Goes Clubbing, Silverman Meets Her Match
In this edition, Jim Carrey returns to his stand-up roots, Sarah Silverman plays matchmaker, and Kevin Bacon is one degree of separation closer to Renée Zellweger.
First up is Carrey. The funnyman is cocreating a half-hour comedy series for HBO starring fellow comic Lisa Lampanelli that will revolve around a woman who runs a comedy club in Los Angeles, per Variety.
The character is inspired by Mitzi Shore, the mother of comedian Pauly Shore and cofounder of L.A.’s Comedy Store, the famed venue that helped launch the career of the Ace Ventura star and dozens of other quipsters. The show will chronicle the ups and downs of running the club while acting as den mother to dysfunctional comics.
Speaking of yuksters, Silverman will be trading one-liners with Saturday Night Live alum Norm MacDonald as celeb panelists for TBS’ new edition of Match Game.
Other stars joining them in the latest revival of the classic ’70s game show will be Super Dave Osborne, Kids in the Hall’s Scott Thompson, The Office’s Rashida Jones and Reno 911’s Niecy Nash.
As anyone who survived the Me Decade remembers, Match Game pits two contestants against each other as they try to match the answers given by the six-member celeb panel. Silverman and Macdonald will attempt to channel Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly.
The pilot, hosted by Semi-Pro’s Andrew Daly, is being executive produced by Robert Smigel, the man behind SNL’s TV Funhouse cartoon spoofs and potty-mouthed puppet Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
In other casting news:
- Bacon will costar with Zellweger, Chris Noth and Nick Stahl in My One and Only, Richard Loncraine’s film supposedly based on actor George Hamilton’s childhood road trips as his mom sought out a wealthy man to care for the family.
- Uma Thurman and Jonathan Pryce are joining forces for My Zinc Bed, a small-screen adaptation of the David Hare the play for HBO and the BBC.
- The same companies have also tapped Oscar-nominated actor Tom Wilkinson and Rhys Ifans for A Number, a telefilm based on Caryl Churchill’s play.
- Kill Bill’s David Carradine and Daryl Hannah are set to reunite and walk the earth for Kung Fu Killer, a two-part original movie premiering Aug. 17-18 on Spike. The story unfolds in 1920s China and follows White Crane (Carradine), an orphaned son of Western missionaries who grows up to become a martial-arts master. After setting out in Shanghai’s underworld to avenge his mentor’s death, he teams up with a Brooklyn lounge singer (Hannah) searching for her lost brother.
Sam Raimi Can Make a Dennis Lehane Adaptation Too
Sam Raimi has signed on to develop and direct a big screen adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day for Columbia Pictures. Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, Dennis Lehane’s long awaited eighth novel tells the story of two families – one black and one white – swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists; immigrants and ward bosses; Brahmins and “ordinary” citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power.
Beat cop Danny Coughlin, Boston Police department royalty and son of one of the city’s most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family, and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.
Featuring the most influential figures of the day – Babe Ruth; Eugene O’Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s ruthless, red chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious, young Justice Department lawyer named John E. Hoover.
Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time – including the Spanish Influenza epidemic and culminating in the Boston Polce strike of 1919 – The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and the thrall of, itself. As Danny Luther, and others around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another, and together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change their lives.
Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, and Snow Angels calls the new book “Rollicking, brawling, gritty, political, and always completely absorbing,” … “a rich and satisfying epic.” The Given Day will be published on September 23rd by HarperCollins.
Dennis Lehane adaptations have attracted A-list talent, and have lead to two Academy Award wins and five nominations. Clint Eastwood directed Mystic River in 2003, and Ben Affleck made his directing debut with Gone Baby Gone in 2007. Martin Scorsese is nearing the end of production on Shutter Island, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams.
source: Variety