![american sniper bts]()
SSN AWARDS ORIGINALS
BEST PICTURE
As a big-time agent, studio head, and now Oscar-nominated producer, John Lesher has had a varied Hollywood career. And through it all, he’s worked with Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárittu. When the director approached him about his new project, an odd concept about a washed up actor looking for redemption, Lesher read the script and said, “Geronimo! Let’s go!,” he explains with a laugh.
Birdman, has been nominated for nine Oscars.
(SSN)
Sometimes, when a movie hits a certain chord with the viewing audience, not only does it clean up at the box office, it starts a national conversation as well.
American Sniper is just such a phenomenon, a movie that has moved audiences to the tune of almost $300 million in domestic grosses, and brought renewed attention to our veterans, the care they receive when they come home, and the after effects war.
(SSN)
TODAY’S HEADLINES
A pair of new Bruce Willis films, a new Wesley Snipes picture, the Oliver Stone-Joseph Gordon-Levitt Edward Snowden film and Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper’s
Les Miserables followup also all get rolling, while Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon wrap
Elvis & Nixon, and several others finish principal photography.
(SSN)
John Hughes and others are slammed in bankruptcy court for having allegedly made questionable investment and real estate transactions, plus not guarding their interest in dealings with Universal, Fox and Warner Bros. Low margins, the use of digital movie-making and cheap labor in foreign countries were all factored in to the downfall of Rhythm & Hues, which sold itself for $17.8 million at auction as creditors continued to circle the bankrupt estate.
(HESQ)
Network announced a brace of drama projects:
Love, Nina, a five-episode half-hour series from Nick Hornby as well as
New Blood, a seven-part hour-long investigative crime thriller from Anthony Horowitz.
Love, Nina is Oscar-nominated screenwriter’s first drama for television and is an adaptation of Nina Stibbe’s bestselling book about a 19-year-old girl, who leaves Leicester to work as a nanny in London.
(DH)
War thriller
Jadotville has been picked up for all its territories for a 2016 release. Dornan stars in the film, as he does on another Netflix program,
The Fall. Film tells the true story of the 1961 siege of a 150-member Irish U.N. battalion under Commander Patrick Quinlan (Dornan) by 3,000 Congolese troops, led by French and Belgian mercenaries working for mining companies.
(VAR)
The pair has
Southpaw coming out this summer, and will get back together to make this movie about Mermelstein, who was sentenced to only two years and 21 days in jail even though it’s estimated he smuggled upward of 56 tons of cocaine, worth $12.5 billion, into the United States. He received a light sentence because he was a valuable asset to the U.S. government, providing insight into the inner workings of the international narcotics network the Medellín cartel.
(UR)
Diane Kruger joins the four-time Emmy winner in the movie, adapted from from customs and excise agent Robert Mazur’s autobiography, the film will find Cranston as Mazur, who must investigate dodgy dealings by going undercover as a man named Bob Musella. Cranston will play Mazur, while Kruger will play the second lead. Brad Furman is directing.
(EMP)
The filmmaker was going to make
The Ferryman as the follow-up to his movie
The Grandmaster, but things changed, and now he’ll direct something else. While Wong remains attached to
The Ferryman as a producer, he’ll put his real energy behind a film called
Blossoms. Just as
The Ferryman will be an adaptation of a short story,
Blossoms is an adaptation of short stories by Jin Yucheng, set in Shanghai.
(SF)
A look at the third season of the Emmy-winning series, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. The new season, from online streaming service Netflix, premieres a week from Friday, February 27th, when all 13 episodes will be made available.
(SF)
