There will definitely be more Blair Witch projects, the producer of last year's hit spooky mockumentary confirmed yesterday.
In an interview with USA Today, president of Artisan Entertainment, Amir Malin, promised both a Blair Witch prequel and a sequel but admitted that they would not be shot on video like the first feature.
"[The sequel and prequel] will not be shot with a digital camera that looks like it was made for $50,000 to $60,000," Malin said.
"In keeping with the franchise, I think it's not going to appear like a David Lean film, either. We'll keep that sense of reality and add a little more meat to the bone." That 'little more meat on the bone' amounts to a budget of between $7m and $10m for each film. Compare that to the original Blair Witch which converted a budget of $40,000 into a $140.5 million gross, making it history's most proportionately successful film ever.
Malin would not be drawn on the story of the sequel, but said the return of the three student film-makers who went AWOL in a Maryland forest remains a possibility. Scheduled to direct is Joe Berlinger, who made the award-winning documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Casting is also underway, with a view to start production in six weeks time. The plan is to have the film in the can in time for a Halloween release date.
Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez will return to write, direct and produce the prequel which, Malin says "will go back to the early days of the [Blair Witch] mythology to the late 18th century and lead up to where we left off [in the first film]". Current plans call for the duo to step into the third film project upon completion of their non-Blair related second feature, Heart of Love, which is currently in production. Blair 3 is tentatively scheduled for a release in the summer of 2001.
Hopkins sinks his teeth in
Anthony Hopkins might have a bone to pick with Jodie Foster after she pulled out of Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (See yesterday's news), but he remains committed to the project, according to his publicist Catherine Olim.
The sole sticking point is Hopkins's fee for reprising his Oscar-winning role. Variety quotes Olim as saying: "assuming they can work out a deal - and all of that remains to be ironed out - he wants to do it. He's always said it would depend on the script. He's read the script". Universal yesterday confirmed that Hopkins did not make a decision until he had read and been satisfied by Steve Zaillian's Hannibal rewrite.
Step back Pulp Fiction, Titus is here
Those desperate to see Anthony Hopkins revelling in gore need not wait as long as the release of Hannibal. The actor, long hailed as a worthy successor to Sir Laurence Olivier, stars as Titus Andronicus in Julie Taymor's Shakespearean adaptation Titus, which has just been released to great acclaim in the States.
Certainly punters expecting the jolly froth of Shakespeare in Love are in for a shock. Noted for her Broadway hit The Lion King, Taymor has apparently conjured Shakespeare's maligned first play about vengeance in imperial Rome into a veritable blood-fest. One online reviewer, commenting on the high rate of severed hands, heads and tongues ends his critique: "if you like slasher movies, check it out".
Titus Andronicus has been filmed three times before, but Taymor feels her adaptation is well-timed to examine violence at the turn of the century and reflect on recent atrocities in locations from Croatia, Cambodia and Rwanda to Colorado's Columbine High School.
Taymor has set the play in Rome and Croatia, updated it with gun play and juxtaposed fight, feast and orgy scenes with surreal, vivid interludes.
Describing her movie as an update of Pulp Fiction, Taymor says, "Titus is not a neat or safe story where goodness triumphs over evil, but one in which, through its relentless horror, the undeniable poetry of human tragedy emerges in full force, demanding we examine the very root of violence and judge its various acts." Spoken like a true Tarantini.
In brief
Jane Fonda has split from her husband, the media mogul Ted Turner after nine years together. The couple said they were separating but were committed to the "long-term success" of their marriage.
Casting couch
Miramax is planning a sequel to The Commitments and has hired playwright Warren Leigh to script a second instalment to Alan Parker's 1991 crowdpleaser. According to one Hollywood insider, "The idea is to bring back some of the original cast. It will involve pairing some of the old faces with new ones, putting the back for a trip to America." It is not known whether Parker will be involved in the sequel.
