Recycled Idea: Notorious D.A.D.
Without even going into the horrible title, I can say that this movie was due to happen sooner or later: Lions Gate has bought a pitch for a family comedy about a rapper who loses heat and has to become a nanny to his accountant’s kids.(Variety)
Book Adaptation: The Last Lap
Adam Shankman, the director battling Shawn Levy for title of worst family filmmaker of the decade (which one will direct Notorious D.A.D.?), has been assigned Michael Leonard’s book The Last Lap, which tells of the "Today Show" reporter’s cross-country road trip with his elderly parents. In case the story sounds good to you, check out Andrew Wagner’s The Talent Given Us, which was one of the underrated delights of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. (Variety)
Book Adaptation: A Walk in the Woods
As much as we’d all like to see Robert Redford and Paul Newman together on screen one more time, A Walk in the Woods might not be the most intriguing idea to make it happen. Based on the book by Bill Bryson about the author’s walk in the woods with a friend, the film could be a geriatric bore for the aging actors. Redford did enough walking in the woods in The Clearing and Newman, despite being 80, has been better in roles that don’t treat him like an old man (Road to Perdition vs. Empire Falls).
In other news, Redford is still talking about making a sequel to The Candidate, his political comedy from more than 30 years ago. After Bullworth, Primary Colors, Election and this fall’s remake of All the King’s Men, not to mention a heightened cynicism toward politics, the urgency of the wishful project seems lost. (Reuters)
Novel Adaptation: Killshot
John Madden’s new film Proof is supposedly pretty good, or at least good in the way that his Shakespeare in Love was good, which isn’t very good at all but is critically well received. Just as he followed the Oscar-winner with an awful adaptation (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin), his follow-up to the new Oscar-fodder will be an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Killshot, because Hollywood is so unintelligent that they will keep remaking all of the crime-novelist’s books on name recognition so they can actually read as few books as possible. If anyone had actually read Get Shorty, well, it still would have been made, but maybe someone would have agreed that it was a bad idea.(Production Weekly)
Article comments
1 - DrPat
Is A Walk in the Woods a new take on Bryson's novel (which was about hiking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail more than it was "the author’s walk in the woods with a friend") -- or is it a remake of the 1988 movie of that name, which starred Robert Prosky and Sam Waterston?
2 - Film Cynic
It is based on Bill Bryson's book about a walk in the woods with a friend. Hey, if that isn't what the book is about, then the title is misleading. Why not call it A Walk on the Appalachian Trail? Jeez.
3 - DrPat
I read Bryson's book last year, and it is certainly focused on the Appalachian Trail, and Bryson's determination to hike its entire length. Perhaps Bryson borrowed the title of the 1988 film for his book...
I don't want to provide a spoiler, but although "Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin" accompanied only by a college buddy, it doesn't work out the way they expect.
There's plenty there for the plot of a movie.
4 - DrPat
Has Leonard's book been published yet? I don't find it in Amazon.