The Amelia Earhart biopic Amelia is currently shooting in Toronto and Empire Movies and BadandUgly have the first photos of Hilary Swank as the legendary American pilot who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a flight around the world. Richard Gere plays publisher and promoter George Putnam, who Earhart eventually married. Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) is directing for Fox Searchlight.

via slashfilm.com

Virginia Madsen has signed on to co-star in the Amelia Earhart biopic Amelia for Avalon Pictures and Fox Searchlight, reports Variety.

Hilary Swank and Richard Gere have already been cast in the Mira Nair-directed film, which chronicles the rocky relationship between the famed aviator (Swank) and publisher-promoter George Putnam (Gere), whom Earhart eventually married.

Madsen will play Dorothy Binney, Putnam's first wife.

via comingsoon.net

Angela Bassett has landed the role of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G.'s mother in the heavyweight's biopic.

The actress, who portrayed Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It, has signed on to portray Voletta Wallace in the planned movie.

Bassett says she jumped at the chance to be a part of the project after taking a look at the script, which she insists does a "wonderful job of bringing his life to the page."

via hollywood.com

Richard Gere clearly intends to be one of the busiest leading men working in film.
Gere has signed on for a pair of projects: Avalon Pictures' Amelia Earhart biopic and Millennium Films' cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest."

In "Amelia," Gere will star opposite Hilary Swank. Pic chronicles the rocky relationship between the famed aviator and her husband, publisher George Putnam.

Mira Nair will direct from a Ron Bass screenplay.

Shooting starts later this month in Toronto, Nova Scotia and South Africa. Kevin Hyman, Ted Waitt and Lydia Dean Pilcher are producing. Swank and Bass are exec producing.

"Brooklyn's Finest" revolves around three unconnected Brooklyn cops who wind up at the same deadly location, despite vastly different career paths. One has gone undercover to crack drug gangs; another has engaged in graft and corruption; while another has played by the rules and put in his time on the force up until his retirement.

via variety.com

No list of great baseball movies would be complete without The Natural, starring Robert Redford. His best performance ever? Maybe not -- but it's certainly a lot of people's favorite. Because of that classic film, Redford is forever connected to our national pastime, and so it's a little exciting to see that he's about to produce another baseball movie: a biopic of Jackie Robinson.

It was Robinson who broke through Major League Baseball's race barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Despite constant racist attacks by opposing players (and, at first, his own teammates), he went on to win the first-ever Rookie of the Year Award and to be a star player throughout his 10-year stint with the Dodgers. Redford will play Dodgers manager Branch Rickey, who supported Robinson from the beginning.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the project (which we talked about here and here) has the support of Robinson's widow (Robinson died in 1972), as well as Branch Rickey Jr. and Major League Baseball. It will be co-produced by ESPN Films, with Thomas Carter directing. Carter's last film was the true-life basketball story Coach Carter, and the three writers listed at IMDb have extensive biopic experience. The flick has all the hallmarks of a loving, faithful, not-too-controversial biopic, and that's fine with me.

via cinematical.com

A presidentially pardoned woman, Kemba Smith, is making her way from prison to the big screen. The Hollywood Reporter posts that producer Will Packer (Trois, Stomp the Yard) has bought the life rights to her story. The project will be produced through his Rainforest Films, and Packer is currently looking for a writer to pen the project.

Smith's story is pretty shocking and should make for an interesting film. Born in Richmond, Virginia, she was raised by middle-class parents and led a life free from troubles with the law until she made her way to Hampton University. There, she "met a man who ended up being the leader of a $4 million crack cocaine ring and one of the FBI's 15 most wanted." For the love of this man, she dropped out of school and went on the run with him.

Although the government acknowledged that Smith never sold or took drugs, "she was charged with conspiracy to distribute crack and was sentenced to 24 years in prison." In 1999 she was featured in Glamour Magazine, which described how she came to be charged for her boyfriend's crimes. In 2000, after 6 years in prison, President Clinton pardoned Smith on his way out of office. Since then, she has since created the Kemba Smith Foundation, and works to gain rights for ex-felons -- namely, the right to vote, serve jury duty, and run for public office.

via cinematical.com

Universal has picked up the nonfiction story First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong and will translate it into a film about the first person to set foot on the moon.

Variety reported that NASA historian James R. Hansen got rare direct access to Armstrong, a test pilot-turned-astronaut who was so driven to reach the moon and play the role of American hero that he became known as "the Ice Commander."

No production date has been set.

via movieweb.com

Rapper-actor Mos Def will play legendary rock 'n' roller Chuck Berry in Cadillac Records, which is filming in New Jersey.

Also joining the cast is Gabrielle Union, who will play Geneva Wade, a girlfriend of Muddy Waters.

The Sony BMG film is set in 1950s Chicago and follows the turbulent lives of Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody), and the label's artists, including Waters (Jeffrey Wright), Little Walter (Columbus Short), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Etta James (Beyonce Knowles) and Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer).

Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God) is directing from his own script.

via hollywood.com

Not content with ruling the TV airwaves like some high-trousered despotic Svengali, Simon Cowell is moving into film, developing a musical biopic with Paramount Pictures and Relevant Entertainment.

The man the world loves to hate is to produce a film about opera singer Paul Potts, a mobile phone salesman who won the UK show Britain's Got Talent in 2007 and went onto sell three million copies of his debut album One Chance.

Cowell was a judge on the show when Potts took to the stage, and tells Daily Variety that he was not optimistic when he first saw the singer. "That particular day was one of the worst, the acts were just terrible, we were fed up and on comes this guy with a funny little suit and bad teeth who looked very nervous.

via movies.ign.com

"Men in Trees" star James Tupper will portray actor Joseph Cotten in Richard Linklater's indie biopic "Me and Orson Welles" with Claire Danes and Zac Efron.

Tupper, who recently signed with ICM for representation, will portray the star whose career was launched with roles in Welles' classic "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons." He starred in several Alfred Hitchcock films and memorably tangled with Welles in the 1949 thriller "The Third Man"

Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the screenplay from Robert Kaplow's 2003 novel, which follows a teen (Efron) who is cast in Welles' 1937 Broadway staging of "Julius Caesar" opposite Cotten. Principal photography has begun in the Isle of Man, London and New York.

via hollywoodreporter.com

I find it amazing that there hasn't already been a film made about Bob Marley's life. I suppose biopics are simply fraught with difficulty -- obtaining rights, trying not to anger surviving family, trying to cram an entire life into two hours.

But now the first film is kicking into gear -- and the Hollywood Reporter has announced that none other than Marley's widow, Rita Marley, is set to produce along with Rudy Langlais. The film will be based on Marley's 2004 autobiography No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley, which has been optioned by the Weinstein Company. The book details the singer's childhood, their tumultuous 15-year marriage, the assassination attempt on the couple, and the singer's early death from cancer in 1981. Langlais is claiming the film will be an "epic romance," but Marley insists she doesn't want a glamorized version. "Every inch of me is in there. I don't want a fairy tale or Cinderella story."

via cinematical.com

Amy Adams will play famed female pilot Amelia Earhart….. in “Night at the Museum 2” (so much for that well-deserved Oscar hey, Amster?).

MTV announced Adams’ character in the Ben Stiller-starring sequel as well as letting slip that Owen Wilson, Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan will also be back.

As for Hank Azaria’s character?

“I am playing a fictional Egyptian pharaoh that comes to life,” Azaria revealed to MTV News. “I’m the villain in the movie and have all sorts of nasty plans for modern society and poor Ben Stiller gets caught in the middle of it.”

via moviehole.net

Director Ridley Scott is making a new movie about late President Ronald Reagan's dealings with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The as-yet-untitled film will reportedly focus on the pair's famous 1986 summit conference that took place in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Scott tells the Hollywood Reporter, "I want to show who they were and why they did what they did.

"Their actions helped shape history, paving the way for the end of the Cold War."

And although the American Gangster director has yet to begin casting, he insists "physical resemblance is secondary."

He adds, "It's less about visible appearance, more about the acting. (But) you have to acknowledge the physicality. Reagan was tall and elegant while Gorbachev was stocky, like a front-row rugby player. In some ways, Gorbachev is easier to cast. Reagan is more colorful."

Reagan, the 40th American president, died in 2004 following a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

via hollywood.com

This is one of those stories that I read about and don’t know quite how to react. Apparently one-time heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is talking again, which by itself is cause for concern. It’s what the retired boxer is saying that makes me wonder whether to laugh or cry.

WENN reports that Tyson is planning on being the subject of one of Hollywood’s numerous biopics. That shouldn’t be surprising. After all, with the speed and frequency studios grind out people’s life stories, it was only a matter of time before they got to Tyson. It’s Tyson’s claim that Academy nominated actor Jamie Foxx has been working with the boxer and plans to portray Tyson in the movie: "Jamie Foxx and I will be working together. He will play me in the film about my life. We already talked about it several times."

Oooh, talked “several times”. Well, that’s almost certainly a binding contract, right? Sadly, if you think the news can be written off as just another one of Tyson’s drug induced fantasies, think again. The same repot says Tyson is drug free for the first time in his life.

via cinemablend.com

John Landis has just signed on to direct Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines, a film about the life of the publisher of EC Comics and Mad magazine. According to Variety, Landis will develop the biopic with the film's screenwriter Joel Eisenberg.

Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines centers on an anti-establishment group of artists and writers, led by a reluctant Gaines and partner Al Feldstein, as they produce their comic books. Gaines became a First Amendment figurehead due to his unapologetic testimony before a Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency.

Landis has not announced when he plans to start production on Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines.

via movieweb.com