Universal eyes femme leads for Tom Cruise pic

CruiseWildeChastainEXCLUSIVE: Tom Cruise may be turning his attention to Paramount's "One Shot" now that he's wrapped New Line's "Rock of Ages," but Universal is moving ahead on its own Cruise pic, the sci-fi epic formerly titled "Oblivion" that's now going by the working title "Horizons."This weekend, a diverse who's-who of Hollywood actresses will test for female leads in "Tron: Legacy" helmer Joseph Kosinski's next project.Jessica Chastain, Olivia Wilde, Brit Marling, Noomi Rapace and Olga Kurylenko are among the thesps testing Saturday -- though others are still under consideration.Universal had no comment on the shortlist.Cruise is set to star as Jack, a man who lives in the clouds above Earth and heads to its surface to repair drones that essentially keep the planet safe from an alien race that has all but wiped out humanity.There are two key female characters -- Victoria, Jack's right-hand woman and lover who serves as his eyes and ears while he's on repair missions, and Julia, his fiancee on Earth before the alien invasion.Chernin Entertainment's Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark are producing with Radical Pictures' Barry Levine and Kosinski, while Radical's Jesse Berger is exec producing.William Monahan and Karl Gadjusek wrote the script, while Michael Arndt ("Little Miss Sunshine") recently did a polish.While the pic is based on Kosinski's upcoming graphic novel from Radical Publishing that remains titled "Oblivion" for now, producers dropped the title for the movie because of the video game "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion."Universal put McG's "Ouija" and Mary Harron's "Wicked Lovely" in turnaround this week -- but "Horizons" is on the fast track. Studio acquired the PG-13 project in April after Disney let it go, and has set it for a July 19, 2013, release. Contact Jeff Sneider at jeff.sneider@variety.com

Aretha Franklin Really Wants To Block Discharge Of 1972 Concert Film Amazing Sophistication

Amazing Sophistication, the documentary film through the late Sydney Pollack on the building of Aretha Franklin’s live gospel album of the identical title, continues to be sitting unseen for 39 years. When the Full of Soul has her way, the Warner Bros filmwill sit longer. Franklin’s attorney Alan Reed expects to find an injunction stopping the film’s release, reviews TMZ. Her campsays the film’s producer Alan Elliott really wants to release it this season andclaims the soul diva’s permission is needed prior to the film could be folded out. The double album, recorded at L.A.’sNew Temple Missionary Baptist Chapel, is Franklin’sbiggest sellingalbum and thetop selling gospel album ever. Elliott is definitely an accomplished film and TV composer and music professional, and stepbrother of producer-manager Benny Medina. No reply yet on acall toWarner Bros to obvious in the privileges problem.

Now in Movie History: 'A Devote the Sun' Illuminates Theaters

Movie: 'A Devote the Sun' Release Date: August 14, 1951 The Way It Got Made: 'A Devote the Sun' reaches once among cinema's great love tales and something of their great crime dramas, but setting it up made would be a struggle marked by bitter arguments before, throughout and following the production. Fortunately, the seamless finished product bore no apparent trace from the strife. Besides just as one enormous come across its release six decades ago now, the film won several Academy awards, cemented the fame of Montgomery Clift and Bette Davis (and produced the look of adult sensuality that changed Taylor from the child star into an exciting-time screen goddess), designed a star from Shelley Winters, and affected filmmakers for many years in the future. The film took it's origin from Theodore Dreiser's 1925 bestseller 'An American Tragedy,' that was consequently inspired with a real-existence 1908 murder trial. Dreiser's title originated from his undertake the crime being an indictment of America's unacknowledged social class hierarchy indeed, the very first person to consider a crack in a movie version was the truly amazing Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, who modified it right into a script throughout his brief 1930 stint in Hollywood. Vital Pictures declined the script, simply due to Eisenstein's avant-garde montage technique and simply due to early anti-communist fears in Hollywood. Vital made the film in 1931, with a brand new script and underneath the direction of Josef von Sternberg. Dreiser prosecuted the studio, unsuccessfully, to avoid the discharge of the version, which focused more about psychology than class distinctions, and which Dreiser stated altered his figures beyond recognition. The film flopped. After Dreiser died in 1945, director George Stevens, a longtime fan from the book, attempted to influence Vital to perform a remake. The studio balked, recalling the sooner suit and commercial flop. Stevens apparently needed to prepare their own suit, alleging breach of contract, to find the studio to relent. Even still, Vital required some changes, beginning using the title. Accounts vary why some say Vital thought 'An American Tragedy' was too glum a title for any movie having a strong romantic element (the studio's preferred title was 'The Lovers'). Others state that anti-communist sentiment, soon to erupt into full-blown McCarthyism and also the Hollywood blacklist, stored the studio from attempting to imply there is anything anti-American concerning the movie. Stevens' connect producer Ivan Moffat emerged using the new, more ironic title that eventually stuck. However the blacklist wasn't finished yet using the filmmakers. 'A Devote the Sun' - Trailer Cast within the leads were 28-year-old Clift (then coming from the achievements of 'Red River' and 'The Heiress') and Taylor, who, at 17, had yet to provide a really adult performance. He'd play George, poor people but ambitious social climber, she Angela, the spoiled wealthy girl of his dreams. As Alice, the 3rd leg from the triangular, the factory girl George impregnates and plots to murder to ensure that he is able to marry Angela, Stevens cast Shelley Winters. A rising celebrity being groomed as Hollywood's next brassy blonde bombshell, Winters convinced the filmmakers that they could play dowdy and mousy after investing two days riding city buses and watching La factory women. Trained Method stars, Winters and Clift introduced their discipline to some Hollywood that will soon be totally changed through the new technique as practiced by Clift, Marlon Brando, and James Dean. In 1949, however, seasoned filmmakers like Stevens thought it was bewildering and irritating, especially since Clift had Russian-born acting coach Mira Rostova about the set with him whatsoever occasions, and also, since he contended with Stevens over how you can play nearly every scene. On the other hand, the Method's focus on offerring intense feelings did serve Stevens' preference for shooting moments with minimal or no dialogue, as well as for shooting extreme close-ups from the actors' faces. The youthful Taylor also thought it was challenging to utilize the meticulous Clift, but his intense dedication and probing emotional method of his character inspired her to provide a performance which was mature beyond her years. They displayed a powerful romantic chemistry that appeared to carry on off-screen. Gossip reviews at that time (without doubt fat through the studio) even thought that they are likely to marry. In fact, despite Clift's flirty behavior, it's likely that no romance ever happened between Liz and also the gay Monty. However they did become close and loyal buddies. Excerpt from 'A Devote the Sun' Shooting started in October 1949 with lakeside moments shot at Lake Lake tahoe, where it had been so cold the filmmakers needed to hose the snow from the trees and also the ground before filming. The perfectionist Stevens ongoing the aim for another four several weeks, subjecting 400,000 ft of film. He and editor William Hornbeck then spent at least a year editing it (though some accounts say he only agreed to be biding time to ensure that his movie would obtain a 1951 release date and never contend with fellow Vital opus 'Sunset Boulevard' within the 1950 Oscar race). The Way It Was Received: The film would be a large hit, becoming the eighth greatest-grossing movie of 1951. Clift's performance gained a few of the greatest praise of his career and created an admirer club. Taylor astonished audiences together with her grown-up sensuality. She'd performed a youthful adult marriage in 50's 'Father from the Bride' (a movie shot after 'Place within the Sun' but timed for release to coincide using the starlet's real-existence wedding to Nicky Hilton), but she had not switched on the entire wattage of her sex appeal so far. The film was nominated for nine Academy awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and finest Actress (for Winters). It required home six trophies, including Best Director, Best Editing, and finest Script (for Michael Wilson and Harry Brown). Co-star Anne Revere, who performed Clift's mother, could trace her lineage to Revolutionary patriot Paul Revere, but by 1951, she'd run afoul of the home Not-American Activities Committee and was blacklisted through the galleries. Her title was cleared all publicity materials for 'A Place under the sun.A She left Hollywood for Broadway and did not come in another movie for 25 years. Lengthy-Term Impact: The blacklisting did not stop with Revere. Oscar-winning film writer Wilson was eventually blacklisted too. He ongoing to create acclaimed as well as Oscar-winning scripts (most particularly, for 1957's 'The Bridge Within the River Kwai,' with fellow blacklistee Carl Foreman) but did not receive proper credit in the galleries or even the Academy until after his dying in 1976. The legal cases ongoing following the film's release too. In 1959, the estate of Patrick Kearney, who'd written a stage version of 'An American Tragedy,' prosecuted Vital, quarrelling that Kearney had maintained the privileges towards the story. In 1965, Stevens prosecuted Vital and NBC within the network's intend to broadcast 'A Place under the sun,A split up by advertisements. He contended that his studio contract forbade anybody from editing the film without his consent, which cutting up in the film for broadcast would ruin the meticulously wrought results of their own extended edit process. The legal fight pulled on for 2 years, using the courts ultimately ruling against Stevens but giving him token damages of $1. To be certain, Stevens' editing actually was among the important elements from the film. His trademark technique, the overlapping dissolve (that could be tracked to Russian formalist filmmakers like Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov), produced a story flow, a swirling hurry of emotion, along with a deliberate contrast of images superimposed on one another. The overlapping dissolve grew to become well-liked by filmmakers within the nineteen fifties and beyond. Jean Luc Godard made extensive utilization of it in the series 'Histoire(s) du Cinema,' even utilizing it to contrast Stevens' own are a war time documentarian, taking real human misery, together with his focus on 'A Place under the sun,A taking glossy, manufactured romance. Woodsy Allen, too, lent liberally from 'A Place under the sun,A sometimes shot for shot, for 'Match Point,' his hit 2005 drama in regards to a social climber who plots to murder his blonde girlfriend to be able to marry a brunette society beauty. When of Stevens' suit, he'd adopted 'A Devote the Sun' with two more classics of Americana: 1953's 'Shane' and 1956's 'Giant' (which reunited him with Taylor). Wilson was focusing on the script for that original 'Planet from the Apes,' while his 'Place within the Sun' writing partner Harry Brown had co-scripted the initial 'Ocean's 11.' One of the acting talent, Raymond Burr, who performed the district attorney, choose to go onto take part in the most celebrated defense attorney in TV history, Perry Mason. Winters had proven very well that they could play dowdy and mousy and spent the relaxation of her lengthy career concentrating in playing hausfraus, harridans and jilted enthusiasts. She won supporting Academy awards for 2 such roles, in 1959's 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (directed by Stevens) and 1966's 'A Patch of Blue.' Even Mira Rostova, Clift's acting coach, went onto a lengthy and effective career being an acting teacher, whose pupils incorporated Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange, Jerry Orbach and, uh, Madonna. For Clift and Taylor, their friendship survived the relaxation of his short existence. They labored together on two other films, and she or he notoriously saved his existence after his 1956 vehicle crash. (He was departing her house at that time, and she or he saved him from choking to dying by tugging his damaged teeth from his throat.) When he died in 1966, he'd been nominated for four Academy awards, including for such classics as 1953's 'From Here to Eternity' and 1961's 'Judgment at Nuremberg.' Taylor, who'd go onto win two Academy awards (for 1960's 'Butterfield 8' and 1966's 'Who's Scared of Virginia Woolf'), would pass into legend, investing the majority of her adult career as Angela Vickers, the free yet not possible goddess she'd performed throughout her first pairing with Clift. The Way It Plays Today: With Taylor's passing in March, 'A Devote the Sun' appears even more poignant let's focus on its portrayal of two impossibly gorgeous youthful individuals who thought they'd unlimited potential. For anybody too youthful to consider why moviegoers spent decades swooning over both Liz and Monty, this is an excellent starting point. Follow Gary Susman on Twitter @garysusman.

It's Official: Jennifer Lopez Signs Deal To Return To 'American Idol'

After lengthy negotiations, Fox today officially announced what everyone already knew by now: that Jennifer Lopez will return as a judge on American Idol next season alongside Randy Jackson and Steven Tyler. The upcoming 11th season of Idol, hosted once again by Ryan Seacrest, will premiere on Sunday, Jan. 22, following the NFC Championship Game. Having both Jennifer and Steven return to Idol in 2012 alongside Randy is such a positive reflection on what was a wonderful and hugely successful season last year, said series creator/executive producer Simon Fuller. Added Fox's president of alternative programming Mike Darnell: From the very first day of auditions, we knew we had something special in our new judges panel, and were so happy that America felt that way too. Together with Ryan -- who is fantastic day in and day out -- they built an incredible connection with both the contestants and our viewers, and Im absolutely thrilled to welcome them all back to Idol for another season. Idol, which received 10 Emmy nominations this year, starts the audition process for next season Aug. 26 in Houston.

Bradley Cooper Leaves 'The Crow''s Nest

Bradley Cooper, who's trying to beef up his career by latching on to roles with more substance than those he's inhabited in 'The Hangover' and 'Valentine's Day,' had been eyeing the lead in Relativity's remake of 'The Crow,' but now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he's had to ditch the part due to scheduling conflicts. Relativity is remaking the supernatural action movie based on the 1990s comic and has set Juan Carlos Fresnadillo to direct. 'Crow,' created by James O'Barr, told the story of a musician who is murdered while trying to save his fiancee from thugs; he's brought back from the dead by supernatural forces and seeks revenge. The role was originally played by Brandon Lee, who was killed by a freak accident during production in 1993; subsequent editions have starred Vincent Perez and Eric Mabius. Cooper is soon to be shooting David O. Russell's 'Silver Linings Playbook' this fall, where he'll play a former teacher on the edge who moves back with his mother and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife, then segues to Alex Proyas' 'Paradise Lost,' where he'll play Lucifer in Milton's epic poem. But never fear Crow fans, there's a couple of names floating around for the part: Mark Wahlberg, who was offered the part last year but a deal never developed, and Channing Tatum. Both actors, however, have heavy schedules coming up and since Relativity is anxious to get the remake off the ground sooner than later, the studio may soon begin looking at other candidates. But who knows? We might get surprised. Who would you like to see play The Crow?

Smallville's Justin Hartley to Appear on Chuck

Justin Hartley Chuck vs. Green Arrow?Smallville star Justin Hartley will guest-star on Chuck this season."Couple of days on the show Chuck this week," the actor tweeted Tuesday. "Great people over there. Fun times."Chuck spies The Matrix's Carrie-Anne MossHartley did not share any details about his role, but Zap2It reports that he will appear in the season's second episode as the brother of Jeff Fahey's character. Fahey (Lost) will play Karl Sneijder, a diamond company boss who has been investigated in the past for criminal activity. He is forced to seek help from Carmichael Industries when his younger brother, Wesley (Hartley) - a Dartmouth- and Oxford-educated anthropologist who has stayed far away from the world of espionage - has been kidnapped by Karl's enemies.VIDEO: Chuck stars geek out over Star Wars' Mark HamillHartley and Fahey join Carrie-Anne Moss and Mark Hamill as Chuck guest stars on its fifth and final season.An e-mail to NBC was not immediately returned.Chuck returns Friday, Oct. 21 at 8/7c on NBC.

Nolte, LuPone and Booth join 'Parker' cast

Nick Nolte, Patti LuPone and Emma Booth have rounded out the cast of action-thriller "Parker," joining Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce and Clinton Collins, Jr.Incentive Filmed Entertainment, Sierra Pictures and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment are partnered on "Parker." Producers are Les Alexander, Jonathan Mitchell, Steven Chasman, Sidney Kimmel and Taylor Hackford.Production began Thursday in New Orleans with Hackford directing. John J. McLaughlin adapted Donald Westlake's novel about a thief who, though at times is forced to be a killer, still lives by a code of honor that includes never stealing money from people who need it.Lopez plays a real estate agent and Nolte will play Parker's mentor.Statham will be seen next in "Killer Elite," and Lopez is currently shooting "What to Expect When You're Expecting." Nolte's in "Warrior," which opens Sept. 9.FilmDistrict has set a U.S. release for "Parker" on October 12, 2012. Sierra/Affinity is handling international sales. Contact Dave McNary at dave.mcnary@variety.com