— Um, so Adam Sandler may not have been concentrating during much of “Funny People.” Or he just really likes money. Either way, the actor/comedian has signed on to star in the high concept comedy “Jack and Jill,” which sounds like exactly the kind of movie his character in Judd Apatow’s movie would have made. In it, Sandler will play both title characters, Jack, and his sister Jill, essentially making it the actor’s version of “Norbit.” The script comes from Steve Koren, writer of “Bruce Almighty” and “Click,” god help us.
— Milla Jovovich will play the lead in “Faces in the Crowd,” for French director Julien Magnat (who is apparently the ‘mentor’ of “Stomp the Yard” helmer Sylvain White, who is producing this). It follows a woman who survives an attack by a serial killer, but wakes up with prosopagnosia, or becomes ‘face-blind’: she can no longer recognise people. This sounds fairly ludicrous – we suppose that in talented hands, this could have the potential to be another “Memento,” but then, if it was likely to be any good, it probably wouldn’t have Milla Jovovich in it, now would it?
— Only two days ago, we reported that January Jones had joined the cast of the Liam Neeson thriller “Unknown White Male,” and now she’s also on board another project far below her talents, playing Nicolas Cage’s wife in Roger Donaldson’s vigilante thriller “The Hungry Rabbit Jumps” (that GQ cover is doing her career wonders, thanks to the producers who saw it and went, “holy shit!”). In it, Cage plays a man who goes to a vigilante group for help after his wife is attacked. The movie’s producer, James Stern, tells The Hollywood Reporter “It’s a very meaty role, not just reactive, but active.” OK, if you say so.
— Fledgling production company Framelight has picked up a couple of fantasy projects for development. The first is “Chi-Chian,” based on a gothy comic book by Cuban-American musician Voltaire, which has also been adapted for a web series by the Sci Fi Channel, set in dystopian, Japanese-ruled New York, about a young woman fighting samurais, robots and zombies. The second is “The Secret History of Tom Trueheart,” an adaptation of a series of young adult novels by Ian Beck, about a young man who must rescue his older brothers from danger in a fairy tale land. The latter will be scripted by veteran writer Mark Rosenthal (“The Jewel of the Nile,” “Planet of the Apes,” next year’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”)
