NEIL Jordan's plans to film Borgia, dealing with the most powerful family in 15th-century Rome, have been put on hold again. It had been planned for a September shoot with Colin Farrell and Scarlett Johanssen starring, but Jordan has withdrawn, citing difficulties with the proposed budget and logistics.
He first planned to make the movie four years ago with Ewan McGregor and Christina Ricci, but there were budgetary problems then, too.
While Jordan remains committed to making the film sometime, a Spanish movie on the same theme has now finished shooting. Meanwhile, Jordan's next project is now confirmed as the Warner Brothers revenge thriller The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster and current Oscar nominee Terrence Howard, and set to shoot this summer.
Sheridan rushes to NY
Disco Pigs director Kirsten Sheridan has begun production on her second feature film, August Rush, on location in New York. Freddie Highmore, the engaging child actor from Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, plays the eponymous character, an orphaned young musical prodigy who performs on the streets as he seeks out his parents, played by Keri Russell and recent Golden Globe winner Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The cast includes Robin Williams and Terrence Howard; the latter is also in Get Rich or Die Tryin', directed by Kirsten's father, Jim Sheridan.
Multiple play for drama
Michael Winterbottom's political docudrama The Road to Guantanamo, positively reviewed on its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, will be seen here first on the small screen, when Channel 4 broadcasts it on March 9th. It will be released in digitally equipped UK cinemas and will be available to buy on DVD and online the following day, going one step further than Steven Soderbergh's Bubble, which went on US cinema and DVD release simultaneously last month.
The Road to Guantanamo deals with the experiences of the Tipton Three, young British Muslims who were travelling to a wedding in Pakistan when they were arrested as terrorist suspects and incarcerated for two years in Guantanamo Bay.
God loves a Trier
As he turns 50 in April, Danish director Lars von Trier, a founder of the Dogme movement, has issued a "statement of revitality". He pledges a more "ascetic" approach to film-making as he shoots his new movie next week. The Boss of It All is a comedy about the owner of an IT firm who hires an actor to play the company president. Von Trier says he will reduce the scope of his productions "in regards to funding, technology, the size of the crew, and particularly casting". And he intends to stop promoting his films as world premieres at "prestigious, exotic festivals" such as Cannes.
Von Trier added that Wasington, the third in his USA trilogy beginning with Dogville and Manderlay, is on indefinite hold, and concluded: "In short, in my 50th year, I feel I have earned the privilege of narrowing down." How sad.
Superman's saga for big Ben
Ben Affleck might not seem the ideal candidate to portray George Reeves, the musclebound actor who played Superman in the 1950s TV series, but then again Affleck has been the subject of some unlikely casting in the past. The film was to be titled Truth, Justice and the American Way until Warner Brothers, which holds the franchise and releases Bryan Singer's Superman Returns this summer, intervened. The movie has been renamed Hollywoodland. It co-stars Adrien Brody as the detective investigating the mysterious death of Reeves, which has been believed to be suicide, along with Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins.
