Lost producer Abrams eye earthquake film
J.J. Abrams wants to make the earth move for you. The producer of Lost and director of the upcoming Star Trek movie is working with David Seltzer, the screenwriter of the original Omen, to shake up audiences with a disaster flick involving an earthquake.
The untitled Universal project is not intended to be a remake of the studio’s 1974 movie Earthquake, which spawned a stop on the its popular studio tour.
Details of the story are being kept in a seemingly tremor-proof vault, though as is Abrams’ modus operandi, relationships will be at the core of the project. Abrams arguably rewrote the rules for disaster flicks with the winter box-office champ Cloverfield,which thrust the big story to the background by making the audience see the bedlam through the prism of a personal relationship.
Abrams is finishing up directing Star Trek for its May 2009 release. At the moment, plans only to produce the Earthquake revamp. Seltzer has a Strangers On A Train remake in development at Warner Bros.
Babel actress Kikuchi to star in Tokyo thriller
Two years after Babel put her on the Hollywood map, Rinko Kikuchi soon could have a map of her own. The Oscar-nominated Japanese actress is in talks to star in Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, a dual-identity drama written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet (Elegy). The Japanese-set dramatic thriller centres on a fish-market employee who doubles as a contract killer.
Kikuchi has undertaken a number of supporting roles since being nominated for Babel. She has parts in Rian Johnson’s con-man movie The Brothers Bloom,which indie label Summit is releasing in the fall and the Weinstein Co.’s wartime romance Shanghai.
Happyness director in Love with divorce drama
Italian filmmaker Gabriele Muccino, who directed Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness, is developing a film described as a modern-day Kramer vs. Kramer.
Like that 1970s custody saga, Muccino said that What I Know About Love will seek to explore the wounds of divorce and single parenthood.
“It’s the story of a family’s collapse, but with the complexity that relationships have today,” Muccino said. “It’s a different world now, one that I think is more open and more destructive somehow.”
Known for exploring the difficulties of romantic couplings as well as parent-child relationships, he will write Love with Sex And The City scribe Liz Tuccillo.
Muccino reunited with Smith for the upcoming Seven Pounds, which Columbia will release later this year. Smith plays a suicidal IRS agent.
Muccino’s earlier films included the middle-class drama Ricordati Di Me as well as L’ultimo Bacio, which became the basis for the 2006 Zach Braff drama The Last Kiss.
