1.) Three ladies are up for the role of Johnny Depp‘s wife in Transcendence, with the final decision between Emily Blunt, Rebecca Hall and Rooney Mara expected to be made on Friday. In any case, Mr. Depp is certainly transcending any perception of age brackets in the dating world, though I doubt that has anything to do with the plot or title. The film is the directorial debut of long-time Christopher Nolan cinematographer Wally Pfister and stars Depp as a scientist whose brain is uploaded into a computer after his death. [Deadline]
2.) Peter Jackson has long been expected to take over the director’s chair from Steven Spielberg for The Adventures of Tintin. Jackson’s plan is now to shoot the film at some point in 2013 with a 2015 release in mind. This would give him a change of scenery in the middle of his post-production work for the second and third Hobbit movies. There’s no word yet on which of the character’s stories Jackson might be tackling with the sequel. [RTBF.be, via Bleeding Cool]
3.) Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris will direct the true story The Big Cigar as their next project. The source material is an article Joshuah Bearman wrote for the December issue of Playboy about Black Panthers co-founder Huey Newton and a successful covert effort to smuggle him out of the U.S. and into Cuba to avoid prosecution for murder and a second violent crime.
Bearman also wrote the article on which Argo was based. And like Argo, the escape in The Big Cigar hinges on a fake movie as Easy Rider producer Bert Schneider set up a movie around Newton called The Cigar, which provided Newton the cover he needed to get himself and his girlfriend out of the country. [Deadline]
4.) Mark Wahlberg and his producing partner Stephen Levinson have acquired a hacker thriller based on David Kushner‘s recent GQ article “The Hacker is Watching” for Universal. The story centers on a ruthless and anonymous hacker who targets the student body of a large suburban high school. You can read the full article right here. [THR]
5.) Fans of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy might be happy to know work on a sequel is currently underway, as confirmed by producer Eric Fellner.
We are working on another one. [Producer] Tim Bevan is putting it together as we speak with [screenwriter] Peter Straughan and [director] Tomas Alfredson, so yes it’s in development… It did unbelievably well and it didn’t cost hardly anything… But things take time. Tim is passionate about making sure we do another one.”
The first film grossed a surprising $80 million worldwide and earned Gary Oldman the first Oscar nomination of his career. It has previously been suggested a sequel would be based on the novel Smiley’s People, which sees Oldman’s George Smiley called out of retirement for one last time. [Collider]
