Roger Friedman is a freak, we all know that, but maybe he got freakier since The Hollywood Reporter let him go decided not to renew his contract (or was it just watching “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” without effects that really sent him over the brink)?
In an early April (but not April Fool’s) piece that most of the blog world seemed to miss the sometimes dubious reporter with a distinctly good/bad track record (depending what day of the week you’re on) claimed that “Spike Lee is right now finishing up shooting ‘Inside Man 2’ with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen.”
Oh, really sister? Cause Lee himself told ESPN a few days later that, “We were going to do ‘Inside Man 2’ but it didn’t workout.” A good thing cause other wise Washington and Owen would have read the earlier report and had their feelings hurt.
However, Friedman does have something in his report that is true (and verified cause we thought it was a scoop for a moment there): Lee has a new joint (read: project) in the works called, “Brooklyn Loves MJ.”
What we can’t verify is the cast that Friedman says is huge and may contain Samuel L. Jackson, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, Rosie Perez, Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington. However, it does sound legit in the sense that these are all mostly actors (aside from Moore) that Lee has worked in the past and many of them several times.
But of course Friedman also said Leonardo DiCaprio was locked in to play Marty Scorsese’s ol’ blue eyes in “Sinatra,” and as we all know that projects, probably like four Scorsese films away and may not even happen. Marty has to get approval from Tina Sinatra on all fronts which could prove to be tough; either way, no script is complete (he recently said, “It’s very hard because here is a man who changed the entire image of the Italian-American And that’s just one thing. Along with his political work, civil rights, the Mob…we can’t go through the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life. We tried this already. Just can’t do it,” sounding pretty pessimistic).
Update: The remainder of this story concerning details of the script for “Brooklyn Loves MJ” has been removed at the request of Zuber & Taillieu LLP.
