Rama's Screen

A couple of months ago, Paramount said that it expects Chris Pine to be the new Jack Ryan in the next installment which will not be based on a Tom Clancy novel. At that point, Producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mace Neufeld are working with a script draft by Hossein Amini, and a rewrite by Adam Cozad is happening, the studio has taken the “first step in creating a re-boot that lives up to the successful lineage of the franchise.”
Via comingsoon.net, Producer Mace Neufeld gave his own confirmation as well that Chris Pine is indeed going to be the new Jack Ryan and the story will be an original, it doesn’t have a title yet but more than that, it will NOT be an origin story… Read the rest of this entry »

A long while ago, it was announced that Ben Affleck with Gone Baby Gone buddies, producer Sean Bailey and screenwriter Aaron Stockard are developing the adaptation of THE BLADE ITSELF based on the explosive crime thriller novel by first time author Marcus Sakey. EsquireMagazine said it was one of the best novels of 2007. The New York Times called it a book that “Delivers a kick and leaves no loose ends.” and after a long time of silence, the project is slowly moving again… Read the rest of this entry »

Ya know, when I said the other day that Chris Pine needs to play other gigs in between his STAR TREK gig, just to avoid being trapped in one role and suffer the William Shatner fate, I didn’t mean that he needs to sign up for another franchise but just like Christian Bale and Ryan Reynolds, Pine doesn’t see the harm in doing so.
According to Variety, after a long while of searching, Paramount has found its new Jack Ryan in Pine.
It’s been confirmed that Pine will continue the legacy that got started by Alec Baldwin and continued by Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck.

Paramount hopes that with Pine as the new Jack Ryan, the studio has taken the “first step in creating a re-boot that lives up to the successful lineage of the franchise.”
Pine is expected to return as Cpt. James T Kirk in STAR TREK sequel but it unclear yet whether he would tackle that before the Jack Ryan movie.
Producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mace Neufeld are working with a script draft by Hossein Amini, based on an original concept, not an adaptation of any of Tom Clancy’s novels.
Just like how the next BOURNE movie will not be based on Ludlum’s books either.
George Clooney and James Franco were some of the names that rumored for the role, but I think Chris Pine is the better choice.

Chris Pine was excellent as the younger Cpt James T Kirk in J.J. Abrams‘ prequel STAR TREK, Kevin Smith praised his performance by calling it ‘effortless’. I know that Pine is probably gonna get stuck playing Kirk for a while now for many more STAR TREK movies in the near future but I think if he keeps playing other gigs in between, especially collaborating with challenging actors and visionary filmmakers, he can develop his skills some more and become a great actor, he could be the next Tom Cruise, some people think Zac Efron would be that guy but I’d like to believe Pine is more worthy.

According to Variety, Chris Pine and director D.J. Caruso (Eagle Eye, Disturbia) will work together on the project THE ART OF MAKING MONEY, a fact-based drama based on a 2005 Rolling Stone article that became the book titled The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten, published last summer by Gotham, it was bought by Paramount Pictures

The movie will produced by Brian Robbins with Sharla Sumpter and Brad Weston. The script was written by Frank Baldwin. If all goes well, Pine will play Art Williams, who rose from petty theft to become a master counterfeiter. Production will start early next year.

Here’s the official synopsis of the book…
The true story of a brilliant counterfeiter who “made” millions, outwitted the Secret Service, and was finally undone when he went in search of the one thing his forged money couldn’t buy him: family.
Art Williams spent his boyhood in a comfortable middle-class existence in 1970s Chicago, but his idyll was shattered when, in short order, his father abandoned the family, his bipolar mother lost her wits, and Williams found himself living in one of Chicago’s worst housing projects. He took to crime almost immediately, starting with petty theft before graduating to robbing drug dealers. Eventually a man nicknamed “DaVinci” taught him the centuries-old art of counterfeiting. After a stint in jail, Williams emerged to discover that the Treasury Department had issued the most secure hundred-dollar bill ever created: the 1996 New Note. Williams spent months trying to defeat various security features before arriving at a bill so perfect that even law enforcement had difficulty distinguishing it from the real thing. Williams went on to print millions in counterfeit bills, selling them to criminal organizations and using them to fund cross-country spending sprees. Still unsatisfied, he went off in search of his long-lost father, setting in motion a chain of betrayals that would be his undoing.
In “The Art of Making Money,” journalist Jason Kersten details how Williams painstakingly defeated the anti-forging features of the New Note, how Williams and his partner-in-crime wife converted fake bills into legitimate tender at shopping malls all over America, and how they stayed one step ahead of the Secret Service until trusting the wrong person brought them all down. A compulsively readable story of how having it all is never enough, “The Art of Making Money” is a stirring portrait of the rise and inevitable fall of a modern-day criminal mastermind.

This is a horror movie directed by 2 pastors.. not that kind of pastors, it’s the brothers Alex and David Pastors. CARRIERS is about 4 friends fleeing a viral pandemic soon learn they are more dangerous than any virus, it’s been sitting on the shelves for 2 years but only now is Paramount brave enough to release it to theaters because the studio believes a certain rising star named Chris Pine of Star Trek will be good enough to attract audience. The scary trailer has finally hit the web which you can watch below. Are you infected?

CARRIERS opens September 4th, 2009

South Park blamed Canada, a few years ago we blamed Bush, today we blame the economy.. it’s been keeping us from doing the things we enjoy doing and it’s been keeping movies from going into production. If you think the problems ended with Amy Pascal’’s discomfort with MONEYBALL’s costly budget and a new script that would hurt its chance from drawing box office money in the international market, think again.. because that was just a beginning.

Like a contagious disease, it has now spread to Fox studio. Recently, along with the casting info of Chris Pine, it was also announced that the action/thriller project UNSTOPPABLE would move forward on the fast track, to be directed by Tony Scott, starring his go-to guy Denzel Washington. With a script by Mark Bomback, Washington would play an experienced engineer who jumps in a locomotive with a young conductor (Pine) to chase down a runaway train carrying a cargo of toxic chemicals and gas enough to wipe out a nearby city.
Well, that train is not moving high speed anymore because according to Variety and Hollywood Reporter, Fox hasn’t green-lit the project due to disagreements over the appropriate budget. None of the deals (acting and directing) are officially locked in yet.

It doesn’t say how much it would cost to make UNSTOPPABLE but 2 concerns motivated Fox’s decision: the fact that Denzel Washington who usually gets paid $20 Million per movie and the recent Scott-Washington collaboration, The Taking of Pelham 123 (check out my review) didn’t do so hot at the box office for Sony, after almost 3 weeks since its opening weekend, the remake only earned a disappointing $53 Million domestically, that’s awful considering it took $100 Million to make the damn thing.

If you were Fox studio, how would you solve this problem?

Kevin Smith praised Chris Pine’s performance in STAR TREK. He called Pine’s acting ‘effortless’, describing him as a combination of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in the 90s. Sounds like Smith has a huge man-crush on the young man but he’s right, I saw the movie and was convinced that what I was witnessing a star in the making. And he’s about to go head to head with one of the greatest of all time, Denzel Washington.

According to Hollywood Reporter, the young James Tiberius Kirk from the alternate parallel universe has joined UNSTOPPABLE for 20th Century Fox, a thriller that reunites Washington his favorite director Tony Scott, marking the 5th time that they’ve done films together (Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Deja Vu, Taking of Pelham 123).
With a script by Mark Bomback, Washington would play an experienced engineer who jumps in a locomotive with a young conductor (Pine) to chase down a runaway train carrying a cargo of toxic chemicals and gas enough to wipe out a nearby city.
Production will start this fall.

I said in my STAR TREK Review that Chris Pine showed signs of a star in the making. Kevin Smith talked to MTV recently, via the vibrant video above, also praised Pine’s effortless performance as young Kirk, describing Pine as a combination of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in the 90s.

The vibrant video below is Director J.J. Abrams’ historic meeting with William Shatner at the recent Hollywood Charity Horse Show

I’m finally going to be able to watch STAR TREK this week so I figured let’s pack in some coolness from the movie into this one post. io9 has that new behind-the-scene set image where J.J. Abrams is directing the crew of the young Enterprise. Not too long ago, it was announced that the writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci will be developing the sequel but they’re not doing it by themselves, TV’s Lost genius Damon Lindelof is helping them out. Comingsoon.net got the chance to have a conversation with the the trio to see what they might have in mind for the storyline.

Damon Lindelof: Alex, Bob and I are going to be writing it together. We’ve started preliminary talks with J.J., but obviously it’s almost jinxing it to get too far down the road. We want it to come out, we hope it does well, and then we’ll take it to the next year.

Alex Kurtzman: We’re HOPING sequel. We had the amazing privilege of falling in love with these characters all over again.

Roberto Orci: Fans have been so important. We genuinely mean it when we say we want to wait and see what they think of the first movie. We want to see if we are lucky enough to get a demand for a second movie.

Comingsoon suggested 2 things, getting iconic episodes or elements from them and just put a new spin for the sequel to which the writers respond that they’ve actually incorporates that concept into this movie, that the fans could see their characters through a different lens, a different angle.
The other thing suggested was Javier Bardem as Khan.

Kurtzman: Oh my God!

Orci: Did you know we’ve actually mentioned that out loud as a possibility? What a great idea.

Lindelof: Come on. That’s a no-brainer. That would be the most amazing thing ever. Who would even what to see these [new] guys then? That’s the problem. You would just watch them for scenery

The vibrant video below is from MySpace artist on artist interview between young Spock, Zachary Quinto, and young Kirk, Chris Pine who claimed he got booed at the WonderCon.

One of my favorite series of all time was THE A-TEAM and now that the big screen version is being developed, I’m keeping a close attention to it. That said, I’m not too excited about the man in charge. It was supposed to be John Singleton project but that didn’t work out, so it turned to Joe Carnahan who made Smokin’ Aces which I thought was a huge pile of mess masquerading as something cool when it was actually anything but.
Speaking of Aces, one of its stars would like to reunite with Carnahan.

Actor Chris Pine told MTV that he and Carnahan have talked about THE A-TEAM.
Footage and clips I’ve seen of STAR TREK goes to show that the dude may have what it takes to pull a young Cpt. Kirk and not anger Trekkies everywhere in the process.
And with his looks, he seems like a good candidate to play Faceman in THE A-TEAM Movie, the character that was originally played by Dirk Benedict.
But nope, Pine had someone else in mind..

“We’ve talked about it,”
“I’d love to.”
Murdock is my man,”
“I love Murdock.”
“I don’t think the script is quite done yet or something. But who knows?”

O dear… I’m not too sure about this one. I’ve always pictured Jim Carrey to play the howlin’ mad Murdock. At one point, there were talks that Woody Harrelson might get the part and I could dig that too.. but not Chris Pine, he’s too much of a pretty boy to be all crazy and funny.
My fear is that Carnahan would succumb to Pine’s wishes and what we have is a crappy THE A-TEAM Movie and there goes my favorite series of all time.. down the drain.
I’ll hate it if this plan comes together.