Back in the early days of the interwebs, I used to butt heads with a contrarian boob who insisted that Tony Danza was our greatest comic resource and that Robert Ludlum was a modern-day Dickens, among other dubious claims. While Danza remains sadly under-appreciated (although he did appear on a 2005 All My Children episode as Erica Kane’s wedding planner, so there’s that), Ludlum has been the recipient of a posthumous reputation bump thanks to the Bourne movies. Now creepmaster David Cronenberg is getting in on the action, as he negotiates to direct The Matarese Circle, a thriller based on a Ludlum novel. Denzel Washington is attached to star in the movie in which “two rival intelligence agents -- one American, one Soviet -- find themselves working together to ferret out and vanquish members of a mysterious group of criminals called the Matarese that has infiltrated the highest levels of American government,” per The Hollywood Reporter. No word yet on whether or not there’s a part for Tony Danza.
Forest Whitaker’s first leading role 20 years ago was Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s jazz biopic Bird. Now Whitaker takes on another jazz legend as the director and star of What a Wonderful World, the first Louis Armstrong biopic authorized by Satchmo’s estate. Ron Bass will write the script that “will kick off during the musician’s impoverished early years in New Orleans and primarily chronicle his career as a trumpet virtuoso and improvisational singer,” Variety reports.
Its producer compares it to Soylent Green, but it sounds more like Quintet to me: it’s Fortuna, starring Dominic Monaghan and Freddy Rodriguez. “Set in 2100, Fortuna envisions an Earth where a collapsed economy and climate crises have eliminated the middle class, leaving a few very wealthy and the teeming masses in severe poverty. To give hope and avoid revolt, the elite create Fortuna, a mysterious game where one in a thousand wins a big payday and joins the upper classes. But their hidden goal to ‘reduce poverty’ by 30% over 50 years comes with a deadly price tag,” says THR. I dunno – collapsed economy? Climate crisis? Sounds like crazy way-out science fiction to me!
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