Looks like it is official, Gerard Butler will be taking on the role of Snake Plissken in a remake of Escape from New York for New Line Cinema. Plissken is a convict and war hero who’s sent into a futuristic New York City — which has been turned into a giant maximum security prison — to rescue the president of the U.S. after his plane is knocked down by terrorists. The original John Carpenter film was set in 1998. Ken Nolan is attached to pen the script. [Variety]
Neil Marshall (The Descent) is set to helm a feature adaptation of Lionel Wigram’s upcoming comicbook “Sherlock Holmes”. The difference in this story from the others has Holmes losing some of his Victorian stuffiness and being more adventuresome, including playing up his skills as a bare-knuckle boxer and expert swordsman as he goes about solving crimes. [Variety]
The Queen helmer, Stephen Frears, is in talks to direct The Burial for Sony’s Screen Gems. The story concerns Willie Gary, who was one of 11 children in a family of migrant workers. He became a multimillionaire attorney, fighting for the working man against huge corporations. Pic will focus on a $500 million settlement he won for the owner of a small chain of funeral homes in Mississippi who sued a Canada-based conglom that dominates the industry. [Variety]
Chris Rock’s co-writer on I Think I Love My Wife, Louis C.K., has joined Martin Lawrence in the comedy The Better Man over at Universal. Lawrence plays a successful talkshow host who moves home to the South. C.K. will play Marty, his fast-talking producer. Malcolm Lee is directing. [Variety]
This isn’t casting news, it is simply a pick-up notice as Interview, directed and starring Steve Buscemi along with Sienna Miller was picked up by Sony Classics with an aim to release the pic in July. Buscemi, who also wrote the screenplay, stars in the drama about a journalist assigned to innterview a young actress. [Variety]
Martin Lawrence is teaming with Raven-Symone for College Road Trip for Walt Disney Pictures. Doesn’t that sound sweet? Roger Kumble is directing the comedy centering on a young woman with ambitious public-defender dreams who goes on a road trip to visit potential universities with her father, an overprotective cop. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ray Liotta will be starring together in Hero Wanted. Brian Smrz will be making his directorial debut with the film, which centers on a garbage collector who stages a bank robbery so he can be the hero and stop it in order to impress a girl who works at the bank. When the plan goes awry, he seeks revenge against the double-crossers. [The Hollywood Reporter]
