Legend tells of a certain movie role long plagued by a Hollywood curse. It’s the lead part in either of the two planned biopics on Deep Throat actress Linda Lovelace, to which actresses such as Anna Faris, Lindsay Lohan, Malin Akerman, Olivia Wilde, and Kate Hudson have all been attached. And usually with interesting timing! This week, one of the films cast a new star: Amanda Seyfried is purportedly in talks to play Lovelace, curiously, just after her latest movie, In Time, tanked at the box office. Below, we look back on the other actresses who have almost played the porn actress at low points in their careers.
Steve Buscemi and Olivia Wilde are in talks to join Steve Carrell's Vegas magician movie Burt Wonderstone. Carrell plays an illusionist who breaks off with his old partner to go solo, only to be upstaged by Jim Carrey's hipper street magician; Buscemi would play the old partner, and Wilde would play Carrell's love interest, who works as Carrey's assistant. As this movie continues to land big names, it's clear it'll be a great thing for the general practice of magic: This is going to be the most high-profile screen time magic has gotten since that super sad Jawdroppers infomercial. Grade: B+
Joel and Ethan Coen are teaming up with Cedar Rapids' writer Phil Johnson on their first TV project. It's called Harve Karbo, it's an hour-long single-camera comedy about a private detective in L.A. who frequently encounters big Hollywood names while on the job, and it's got a script plus penalty commitment from Fox. The Coen Brother's famed dark humor and subtle sensibilities are going to fit in great with American Dad. Grade: A [HR]
Jeremy Renner is attached to King of Heists, an adaptation of J. North Conway's nonfiction book about an 1878 New York City bank robbery in which a man named George Leslie came to town pretending to be an upscale gentleman while assembling a crew that eventually pulled $3 million from the Manhattan Savings Institution. This all sounds totally great, and that’s before considering the project’s potential for old-timey moustaches. Grade: A [Deadline]
Simon Cowell is actively trying to sell Red or Black?, a game show produced by his company Syco that premiered in the UK earlier this month, to US networks, and a sale might happen in the next few weeks. While there are other contrivances built in, the show is apparently more or less televised roulette. So good news for our very own game-show pitch, a televised version of "Guess which number I'm thinking of." Grade: D [Vulture]
Worst Actress is traditionally the most difficult Razzie category to predict, because the performances are the most widely varied. Will nominations go to Oscar nominees slumming it (as when Diane Keaton was nominated for 2007’s Because I Said So)? Or will it go to the forgettable female “lead” in an action movie (as in Megan Fox’s nominations the past two years, for Jonah Hex and Transformers 2)? Or will a single nomination go to a whole group of ladies (the casts of Sex and the City 2, The Women, and Bratz: The Movie) in a manner that doesn’t at all suggest that the Razzies find all women and movies about women interchangeable and icky?
Despite a premise that fused two once-reliable genres and a cast featuring both Indiana Jones and James Bond, Jon Favreau’s $163 million Cowboys & Aliens got smurfing smurfed at the box office over the weekend, opening to a measly $36.2 million — well below even the modest $45 million its makers had predicted. As Harrison Ford scrambles into the nearest refrigerator, we at Grantland are left to wonder just what happened. We asked an agent, a producer, and a publicist for insight on why C&A bombed so badly — and what the fallout might be for its makers and Hollywood at large.
