Summit Entertainment is set to acquire world rights to the Jodie Foster helmed, Mel Gibson led “The Beaver,” a dark comedy by Kyle Killen which featured on the 2008 Black List. The film will follow a depressed man who finds solace in wearing a beaver hand-puppet. This could be great. [Variety]
Spike Lee’s “Passing Strange The Movie” will launch the Sundance Channel’s ‘Sundance Selects’ series, a new video-on-demand program that will kick off on August 26. The program is a new national platform for independent documentary and world cinema titles that feature one premiere per month on demand. Lee’s film is a semi-autobiographical story of a young black man who leaves behind his middle-class church-centered upbringing in the 1970s for a trip to Europe in search if his “artistic and personal identity”. [Indiewire]
Michael Engler is attached to direct “A Little Something For Your Birthday,” a screenplay by Susan Walter about a clothing designer struggling her way into her 30s also on 2008’s Black List. The search for a lead actress is being undertaken. [THR]
Another poster for Lone Scherfig’s “An Education” has been released. A bit too much happening at once? [IMPA]
Jay Parini, the author of “The Last Station” which is being adapted in a film starring Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Christopher Guest and Paul Giamatti, recently chimed in on the film’s upcoming release. “We’re awaiting news of Toronto,” Parini writes. “Don’t yet know if we’ll get a slot in the festival there, but hope so. We’re still awaiting news of the London Film Festival and others. I suspect we’ll have a range of these to choose from… Optimum is releasing in the UK in January. They are wildly enthusiastic, and this is great news. The producers are still in negotiations for an American release, which I’m sure will come; but we are having to wait for the details.” [IMDB]
A new poster for Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” has also been unveiled and it looks like they’re embracing all the controversy, which isn’t a bad idea. Click the poster to enlarge and get a better read of the quotes, btw. [IMPA]
Charlotte Gainsbourg is set to star in Julie Bertucelli’s second feature, “The Tree.” Gainsbourg will play a grieving mother (again?!) in the film based on the book “Our Father Who Art In The Tree” by UK-based Australian author Judy Pascoe. Marton Csokas and Aden Young are also in the cast. [ScreenDaily]
Allison Anders is set to update the characters in her 1993 film, “Mi Vida Loca” with “Smile Now Cry Later” a drama shooting this fall that will presumably have returning characters from the original Latino female driven film which centered on Sad Girl, Mousie and Whisper – street gang girls with plenty of hope and not much of a future. [IONCinema]
Neil LaBute will write and direct an adaptation of Charles Willford’s “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” a crime novel set in the world of modern art. The story follows a corrupt art critic’s attempts to finagle an interview with a legendary but reclusive French painter and is set in Palm Beach. [Variety]
