1.) Marvel has hired Chris McCoy to rewrite the screenplay for their upcoming superhero teaming Guardians of the Galaxy from a previous draft penned by Nicole Perlman. The film is set to hit theaters on August 1, 2014 with a director yet to be attached. The story is expected to include Drax The Destroyer, a human resurrected as a green warrior with the sole purpose of killing Thanos (the villain in The Avengers final scene tease which you can watch to the right); Groot, a giant tree-man; Star-Lord, a gun-toting half-human/half-alien inter-galactic vigilante; Rocket Raccoon, a genetically engineered animal with a knack for guns and explosives; and Gamora, the last survivor of her species who was saved by Thanos to be his assassin but now battles him.
As for McCoy, three of his previous scripts have landed on the Black List. [THR]
2.) Chris Pratt (Moneyball is in negotiations to join Vince Vaughn in the upcoming comedy Starbuck as an attorney in the remake of the 2011 French-Canadian comedy centering on a middle-aged man (Vaughn) whose life is turned upside down when he learns he has fathered 533 children through sperm donation. When a few hundred of the children express an irrepressible need to meet their father, he must decide whether to step up and reveal his identity. Ken Scott, who wrote and directed the original, is writing the new version and will direct. [THR]
3.) Nicole Kidman will reportedly work for a “few days” on Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac, a film described as the wild and poetic story of a woman’s erotic journey from birth to the age of 50 as told by the main character, the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, Joe. Word is the film will be rather pornographic with both a hardcore and softcore version. Kidman, who starred in von Trier’s Dogville, is not expected to play Joe and she will be joining Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard and Willem Dafoe in the feature. The film, despite the recent banning of von Trier, is targeting a finish date in time to hit the Cannes Film Festival next year. [Allocine via [The Playlist]
4.) Kudos to Matthew McConaughey for getting away from those dreadful rom-coms and lining up some much better roles as of late and his next one looks to be a dandy as he’s signed on to play the role of Mark Hanna in Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street. Based on Jordan Belfort’s best-selling memoir telling the story of his time as a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 20 months in prison for refusing to cooperate in a massive 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration. Leonardo DiCaprio is playing the lead role and he and McConaughey are surrounded by a stellar cast that includes Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, Jean Dujardin, Rob Reiner, Julie Andrews, Margot Robbie, Jon Bernthal and Jon Favreau. [Deadline]
5.) Akiva Goldsman is reportedly preparing to deliver a new draft of the first installment in The Dark Tower series — based on the seven Stephen King fantasy novels — to Warner Bros. inside the next two weeks at which point a decision will be made on whether or not they’ll green light the first installment in what is expected to be three films with two television seasons shot in between. Additionally, word is Javier Bardem is no longer in the mix as the franchise lead character, Roland Deschain, but Russell Crowe, who shot A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man with director Ron Howard, is in talks to play the part.
Universal Deadline]
