The enigmatic director Ray Lawrence will be returning to American screens next spring with the film Jindabyne. Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the rights to the film, which is already a box office hit in Australia. Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne star in the film, about a group of men who find a dead Aboriginal girl while on a fishing trip but continue their trip as scheduled. Byrne plays one of the fishermen, Linney plays his deservedly furious wife. Jindabyne will make its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.
Who doesn’t love an underdog sports film from the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. First, Sylvester Stallone gave us Rocky, then four more Rockys. This week, the Marky Mark Wahlberg vehicle Invincible comes out. Then in December, Rocky 6 enters the ring. And next year, the great Philly sports film tackles a new sport: Bass fishing. Yes, the high-powered, tenacious, and nerves-of-steel sport of Bass Fishing. Mike Iaconelli, the 2003 Bassmaster Classic Champion, has signed away the rights to his life story, “Fishing on the Edge,” to Fox Atomic, which has added another stellar title to their growing library of other stellar titles, like Revenge of the Nerds: The Remake
and 28 Days Later 2: 28 Weeks Later.
Paul Dinello (Strangers With Candy) has signed on to direct Mr. Burnout from a screenplay by Eric Gravning. Nala Films’ Emilio Diez Barroso and Darlene Caamano Loquet will produce.
The great filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou (Café Lumiere, Millennium Mambo) is leaving the friendly confines of Thailand to film abroad for the first time in Paris. In Orsay, named after Musee d’Orsay, a young boy and his baby-sitter occupy the same dream world. Throughout their travels, presumably through the Musee d’Orsay, they’ll be pursued by a red balloon, an homage to the great French film Le Ballon Rouge. Juliette Binoche is signed on to play the boy’s mother.
Alan Ball
, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of American Beauty and the Emmy-winning Six Feet Under, will finally make his much anticipated big screen directorial debut with Towelhead, based on the novel by Alicia Erian. The script, which has been shelved since being optioned in 2004 while Ball wrapped up Six Feet Under, has found financing in the guise of Steven M. Rales, who will produce with Ball and Ted Hope. Scott Rudin, Peggy Rajski, and Anne Carey are the executive producers.