Extra! Extra! Link All About It

So much news and other things to link up. Okay, here we go...

Polygon <-- I wrote this piece for them on The Dark Knight and the Oscar quake that followed. Have a look won't you? 
The Ringer LOLZ. The forthcoming Downton Abbey movie ...with zombies
Variety Weinstein Company's library of hundreds of Oscary films and TV shows like Project Runway now owned by a new company Lantern Entertainment. 
MNPP Tab Hunter marathon on TMC this Friday!
/Film Batwoman series in development at CW. It's another one of those Berlanti superhero shows. I enjoyed The Flash for a time but I really wish if we're going to have this many shows that there would be some differentiation of producing teams so that there wouldn't be so much homogeny with point of view.

More after the jump including MoviePass trouble and new projects for Halle Berry, Taraji P Henson, Rose Byrne, and Kate Winslet... 

Click to read more ...

Bingelinking

Since we haven't done a link roundup in too long, here are way too many of them for your clicking pleasure and general infotainment.

Screens
• Cartoon Brew Freshly Oscared Guillermo del Toro is taking active role in Dreamworks Animation going forward
• Vulture "I ate like Olivia Pope for a week, and didn't die" - a hilarious journal/tribute to Scandal in its last season
• NYT a profile of Rachel Weisz. It opens with beauty tips, pregnancy, and lesbian sex and I shuddered thinking we were going to get a deluge of thinkpieces about editors assigning sexist men to write about actresses but we are saved from the thinkpieces because it turns out it's a Maureen O'Dowd article
• Playbill Amazon is launching a new short form series After Forever about a 50something gay couple tomorrow. Lots of theater folks are in it

More after the jump including Michelle Pfeiffer's Janet van Dyne, Isle of Dogs charity mission, Drag Race revelations, auctions of the unwanted (Ghost in the Shell and Weinstein Co), and lots of Avengers and Westworld... 

Click to read more ...

No More Mara "Magdalene" This Year

Chris here. We've been dying to see Rooney Mara in Garth Davis's Lion follow-up Mary Magdalene ever since those set photos emerged of her smoking in costume. But unfortunately the wait is about to be longer: the Weinstein Co. just pushed the film off this year's release calendar. We suspected this news might be coming when the film wasn't showing up in any festival lineups, but now the news in confirmed.

However, this doesn't mean that Mary Magdalene is headed towards the same fate as their delayed-into-oblivion titles Suite Francaise and Tulip Fever (which will finally open wide Sept. 1 - allegedly). Weinstein Co. has simply pushed the film back to March 30, which will be appropriately timed for Easter weekend. Perhaps opening on the holiday will be a smart cash grab given the relevancy with the subject.

But the Weinstein's aren't giving up that prime November release date after the same timing worked out so well for them last year with Lion. They have now moved up the Edison/Westinghouse electricity race film The Current War to Magdalene's former November 24 date. That film plays right into the Academy's biopic sweet spot and boasts a nomination-ready ensemble that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, and Tom Holland. The financial struggles of the Weinstein Co. would likely have not been able to support the awards hopes for both, so maybe this is the best scenario for both films. Even if it means we'll have to smoke another pack with Mara Magdalene while we wait.

"Mary Poppins Returns" and "In the Heights"

Broadway's Hamilton fever has caught up with mainstream Hollywood. The Tony winning writer/director/actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose Hamilton is the easy frontrunner going into the Tony Awards a week from Sunday (I'm finally seeing it, too, wheeee, albeit a few days after the Tony Awards - thanks Rory!) has two big movies brewing now.... and that's before anyone gets around to trying to get Hamilton on the big screen. He exits Hamilton on July 9th so he'll have plenty of time to chase these Hollywood opportunities.  

Mary Poppins Returns
We've heard rumors of a Mary Poppins remake for ages but it looks like we're getting a sequel instead with the delightfully versatile Emily Blunt as the magical nanny (the iconic Julie Andrews part) and Lin-Manuel Miranda as a new character but I'd still expect a jolly-holiday sort of partner in magical highjinks for Mary. He's described as a "lamplighter" which isn't that far off of chimney sweep in civic duties, don'cha know. The score will be written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman who wrote most of the best songs for Smash as well as Broadway's terrific Hairspray. So all of that is very good news. Plus an ORIGINAL movie musical. That is a rarest of things since forever outside of Disney's Little Mermaid era!

But... the film is to be directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Into the Woods, Nine).

The choice of Marshall is wholly expected since Hollywood doesn't seem to believe it can make musicals without him. That's a pity. Nothing against Marshall but he's not consistent enough to be anywhere close to a "must get". We wish they'd realize that the genre needs and deserves new Vincente Minnellis, Stanley Donens, and Bob Fosses, not someone who can just get the job done and hope for the best about the final result. I am confident that those people exist but remain untapped. The film is due on Christmas Day in 2018. The original Disney classic was nominated for 13 Oscars, winning 5. (It's still Disney's only live action Best Picture nominee... though there Touchstone wing has been nominated before) Good luck measuring up! 

In the Heights
The Weinstein Company is also getting into the Miranda business with a film version of In the Heights, his musical from 2008 about three days in the lives of characters in the Washington Heights neighborhood of NYC (which is largely Hispanic). A previously announced production by Universal failed to materialize. The film won 5 Tonys including Best Musical. No casting or director announced for this one but they want it to be bare bones and "scrappy." No release date yet announced but sometimes stage to screen versions take decades. ("Wicked"? What's that?)

Any suggestions for the director's chair? 

Jane Got A Gun might have a happy ending

Here's Murtada telling the tale of Jane. 

       

Say you are Natalie Portman. You just won an Oscar then took some time off to raise your young family. You are ready to come back to work. You decide to take charge of your career and produce a movie. You find a hot script by a young talented writer. It’s a revisionist western, a genre you haven’t tried before. You choose to work with an acclaimed female director because you want to tell more stories about women and employ more women. To co-star you choose one of the most respected actors of your generation. Great intentions all around. Then everything falls apart just as filming is supposed to start.

That’s the saga of Jane Got a Gun. On the first day of shooting director Lynne Ramsay left. Despite a now settled lawsuit no one knows why but differences with producers and financiers are suspected. The leading man, Michael Fassbender, leaves too as Ramsay was the main reason he signed on. He’s replaced by Bradley Cooper. Then Jude Law. Then Joel Edgerton who was supposed to play the “baddie” is promoted to the lead. Ewan McGregor is hired for Edgerton’s part. Producers scramble to find a director while the cast and crew are waiting on set in New Mexico. Finally Gavin O’Connor (Warriors) is hired. He brings with him his writer (Anthony Tambakis ) and they do a major re-write alienating the original writer (Brian Duffield). Somehow everyone gets to work, the movie is shot while PR experts are in damage control mode.

Months later the movie is set for release for February 2015. Then it’s delayed to September 2015. And a month before release the studio behind Jane goes bankrupt. The film is one of many caught in the crosshairs of Relativity’s recent Chapter 11 filing. Others include the Nicholas Hoult- Felicity Jones starrer Collide and Jim Sheridan’s The Secret Scripture with Rooney Mara and Vanessa Redgrave.

But it looks like there’s a happy ending for Jane after all. The Weinstein Company has picked it up for distribution and will release in Europe this November and in the US next February.

And it’s also nice to see Natalie Portman continue creating opportunities for women behind the camera. She directed her first movie A Tale of Love and Darkness based on Amos Oz's autobiographical book. The movie played Cannes and Toronto to mixed reviews. One of her upcoming projects is On the Basis of Sex, a biography of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be directed by Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl).

Are you glad to finally see Jane get a break?