Tracking Shot June 2009: Rabbit Hole, We Want Sex, Black Venus…

At the beginning of every month, IONCINEMA.com’s “Tracking Shot” features six projects that are moments away from lensing and that we feel are worth signaling out. This June (2009), we are keeping tabs on: John Cameron Mitchell‘s third film with Kidman and Eckhart on board to star, Sofia Coppola shacks up in another hotel this time in Los Angeles and Steven Soderbergh will be scouting stadiums not that far away. Across the pound Abdellatif Kechiche begins filming Black Venus and the U.K will see William Monahan make his directorial debut with London Boulevard and Nigel Cole directs Sally Hawkins in a drama that reminds me of North Country. Not featured, but worth the mention: Robert Rodriguez is taking on a trailer turned feature length film project Machete in Austin.

* Black Venus
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche – Screenwriter: Kechiche and Ghalya Laroix
Producer(s): MK2’s Charles Gillibert, Marin Karmitz and Nathanaël Karmitz
Cast: None named right now, expect a new face to take the lead role like as his previous films (Sara Forestier and Hafsia Herzi).
Probably set up in the south of France, this is inspired by the true story of Sarah Bartmann, a South African slave whose unusually oversized features brought her to 19th century Europe, where she found fame and fought for her own freedom.

* London Boulevard
Director and screenwriter: William Monahan
Producer(s): Quentin Curtis, Graham King, Monahan and Redmond Morris
Cast: Keira Knightley, Anna Friel, Colin Farrell, David Thewlis and Ray Winstone
Based on Ken Bruen’s novel and scripted by William Monahan, this revolves around a South London criminal who, after release from prison, tries to give up the gangster life by becoming a handyman for a reclusive young actress.

* Moneyball
Director: Steven Soderbergh – Screenwriter: Stan Chervin, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson
Producer(s): Michael De Luca and Rachael Horovitz
Cast: Brad Pitt and former Professional Baseball players.
The book focuses on Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who used a sophisticated computer analysis system to piece together a team that regularly contended for the World Series despite a payroll dramatically lower than such big-market rivals as the New York Yankees.

* Rabbit Hole
Director: John Cameron Mitchell – Screenwriter: David Lindsay-Abaire
Producer(s): Nicole Kidman, Gigi Pritzker, Per Saari, Leslie Urdang and Dean Vanech
Cast: Mitchell’s third time behind the camera has Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart sharing the bill.
Filming in New York, this is based on the Broadway play, the story concerns a happily married couple whose lives are disrupted after an unexpected tragedy and the intensely emotional, redemptive journey they must undertake to regain happiness. 

* Somewhere
Director: Sofia Coppola – Screenwriter: NAME
Producer(s): Sofia and Roman Coppola and G. Mac Brown for American Zoetrope.
Cast: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning
Mounted by Focus Features (who were on board for Lost in Translation), this is obviously filming in Los Angeles and centers on a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess at the celebrity locale, the Chateau Marmont. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter, he is forced to reexamine his life.

* We Want Sex
Director: Nigel Cole – Screenwriter: Bill Ivory
Producer(s): Number 9 Films’ Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen (she co-produced The Crying Game). 
Cast: Sally Hawkins is already on board and they’ll be looking to cast two other major female roles with Imelda Staunton might be one of them.
Filming somewhere in the U.K, this is about the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant when 850 female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination in their job performance evaluations. Their actions gave a huge boost to the women’s rights movement in the country and helped bring about equal pay for women in the workplace.