Miramax Films and producer Scott Rudin have acquired screen rights to Richard Price's novel "Lush Life," just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Price, who recently won the Edgar Award for his script work on HBO series "The Wire," will write the script. Deal for book is for mid-six against seven figures.

"Lush Life" is set up as a police procedural in which a restaurant manager and his bartender set out to walk a drunken friend home on Gotham's Lower East Side. One of the men winds up on the wrong end of a bullet, and a murder investigation reveals much about the city and the characters involved in a mugging gone wrong.

via variety.com

Gone Baby Gone was an incredible directorial debut from the multi-talented Ben Affleck who in the past two years has finally started to put those terrible low brow comedies behind him and has really stepped up his game as an interesting voice in the industry once again.

Smartly, the news today is that Affleck is teaming once again with Gone Baby Gone screenwriter Aaron Stockard and Miramax Studio’s to produce (and possibly direct but the trades don’t say that) another film noir/crime novel in The Blade Itself, a well reviewed first time novel from Marcus Sakey.

“Blade” revolves around two Chicago childhood friends who made their reputation committing petty crimes as kids before choosing different paths in life. When they are reunited years later, one is forced to decide how far he will go to protect the secrets of his past. Esquire magazine named the novel one of the five best of 2007.

Affleck currently has no directing projects in the works so I guess with him producing that it’s his flick if he wants to direct it.

via obsessedwithfilm.com

Director Ben Affleck's powerful underworld tale is another distinctive showcase for his on-a-roll brother, Casey.

"Gone Baby Gone" has the structure and all the trappings of a neo-noir private-eye thriller: betrayals, evasions, corruption and gunfire. But in the end it swats away our narrative expectations and leaves us marooned on a sandbar of moral ambiguity. The picture is a disquieting triumph for its first-time director, Ben Affleck, who also cowrote the script (based on Dennis Lehane's 1998 novel), and for his brother, Casey Affleck, whose muted star performance, following on the heels of his virtuoso turn in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," suggests that he's on a career roll.

via mtv.com

The creators of "The Blair Witch Project" are back with a new horror movie involving a monster. Michael C. Williams, who starred in "Blair Witch," plays a role in this film as well. Altered" follows a group of men living a night of terror after their lives were changed 15 years earlier by a strange occurrence.

Genres: Art/Foreign and Drama
Running Time: 1 hr. 35 min.
Release Date: December 20th, 2006 (limited)
MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual content and brief nudity.
Distributors: Miramax Films
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Leslie Phillips, Jodie Whittaker, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Griffiths Directed by: Roger Michell Produced by: Scott Rudin, Tessa Ross, Miles Kettley

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Release Date: December 15th, 2006

The story of Maurice and Ian, a pair of veteran actors, whose comfortable daily routine is disrupted by the arrival of Ian's grand-niece, Jessie. Maurice takes the teenager under his wing, but is surprised to discover how very little he actually knows now that his own life is drawing to a close.

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Venus tells the story of Maurice and Ian, a pair of veteran actors, whose comfortable daily routine is disrupted by the arrival of Ian’s grand-niece, Jessie. Maurice takes the teenager under his wing, but is surprised to discover how very little he actually knows now as his own life is drawing to a close.

 

In Theatres: December 15th, 2006

Romance
Rating: R

Roger Michell (dir.)
Peter O’Toole
Leslie Phillips
Jodie Whittaker
Vanessa Redgrave
Richard Griffiths

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When news of the death of Princess Diana reaches the British public, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) retreats behind the walls of Balmoral Castle with her family, unable to comprehend the public response to the tragedy. For Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), the popular and newly elected prime minister, the people's need for reassurance and support from the royal family is palpable. As the unprecedented outpouring of emotion grows ever stronger, Blair must find a way to reconnect the queen with the British public.

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