Neve Campbell Heads to Amish Country
The Call Sheet sifts through the day's glut of Hollywood news to find the stories even non-industry types care about. Today: Neve Campbell returns to a strange place, two new trailers fail to impress, and J.J. Abrams picks another project.
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Neve Campbell, long thought to be nothing more than sad '90s driftwood, has resurfaced, in an Amish community no less. A fictional Amish community, dummy! She's just signed a deal to star in a movie for Lifetime: Television For Women Who Like Watching Women Abducted and Murdered that will also serve as a "backdoor pilot," meaning if the movie performs well enough, it'll go to series. The tale is called Julia Salinger's Magical Journey Sworn to Silence and is about a woman returning to the Amish community where she grew up to become its chief of police. Then there's a moidahhhh and old moidah-secrets get dredged up and, presumably, there's some crazy hunky Amish dude who Neve wants to get on down with. This is Witness meets For Richer or Poorer meets A Stranger Among Us meets, oh who knows, every movie about someone returning to their hometown. It meets all of them. This thing gets around, let's say. Anyway. Good for Neve! Sincerely. Now, when does Baby Owen get his second day in the sun? [Deadline]
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Superproducer J.J. Abrams is teaming up with just regular producer Mark Schwahn, who created the long unkillable series One Tree Hill, to make a series called Maine, which will be set in Arizona. Oh wait, no, sorry, it will be set in Maine. At an inn in Maine. So it is basically Newhart with more soap opera sex, lots of never-solved mysteries, and it's set in Maine, not Vermont. If it was set in Vermont it would be called Vermont. But it's not. It's not called New Hampshire or Ontario either. It's called Maine, so it's set in Maine. At an inn. Sounds thrilling. [THR]
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Another superproducer, name'a David E. Kelley, is creating a show which you'll probably be very interested in. Haven't you always wanted to see a show about doctors? Like, at a hospital? Well your long wait is over, because Kelley has teamed up with real-life TV doctor Sanjay Gupta to create a TNT show called Chelsea General based on a novel by Gupta. Amazing, huh? The fictionalized lives of doctors, actual medical doctors, soon to be on your TV screen. What a world we live in! The show is about surgeons and is framed around the hospital's regular meetings where they discuss "morbidity and mortality," basically what went wrong. Though with a name like Chelsea General, it could also be about the leader of a pack of post-DADT Chelsea-dwelling Army bois. But, ugh, they've made that show like a million times. Bring on some fresh, bring on the doctors! [THR]
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Oh dear. Here is a trailer for the new Three Stooges movie that was once going to be like Sean Penn and Jim Carrey and someone else but is now Sean Hayes, Will Sasso, and this guy (total Stooge look, Stooges are so suave). Yeah, so that's the unillustrious cast and the Farrelly Brothers are the directors and... Woof. Snooki joke! Lobster on the nuts joke! Jennifer Hudson as a singing nun! Sofia Vergara! It just all feels... We're not sure why but we were almost expecting like a darker, more serious Three Stooges, maybe a biopic with some slapstick in it, but this is just straight-up modernized Three Stooges. May god have mercy on us all. Why he oughta...
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And here is a new trailer for what is ostensibly August Rush: 2 August, 2 Rush, otherwise known as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the film based on Jonathan Safran Foer's 9/11 grief porn novel. The thing is directed by Stephen Daldry, so there is a decent chance it could be good, but man they are not doing a great job with the promos. Plus, why would they cast Leelee Sobieski as the son? Just a strange bit of casting. Ah well. Weep on, Sandy Bullock!
Director Patty Jenkins was, oddly, chosen to direct Thor 2, her first picture since the tiny indie Monster, but now she's dropped out. Aw nuts. Apparently there was some bit of "creative differences," which is too bad, but those of you hoping for a Jenkins-directed blockbuster caped crusader type deal, despair not. It seems she might still be in line to direct one, just not a sequel. Guess she just wanted to put her original stamp on something. Which is fine and stuff but, uh, aren't we kinda out of superheros? At least like recognizable ones? They're basically all in The Avengers or Batman or Superman. Well, OK, maybe Green Lantern is due for a reboot. It's been a long time since they tried that. Maybe that's what she'll do. Green Lantern. What could go wrong! [Deadline]
Here is a list of some big actors' most embarrassing movies, many of them from early on in their careers. That makes sense, even Olivier probably made some clunkers early on, but like, Jessica Biel is also on this list. As is Katherine Heigl. Aren't pretty much all of their movies their most embarrassing movies? The more interesting, and shorter, list would be "Jessica Biel and Katherine Heigl's Most Not Embarrassing Movies," and they'd get like two each. We're thinking The Illusionist and Ulee's Gold for Biel, and Knocked Up and... My Father The Hero? for Heigl? Hm. Maybe giving two each was too generous. [EW]
A musical based on the lovely little movie Once that just opened Off-Broadway has already gotten the call to move up to the White Way. It will move into the Jacobs in February. Apparently it's pretty good and now more people will get to see it. Remember how surprised Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova were when they won that Oscar for Best Song? This must just be icing on the whole huge surprise cake. What a nice story. [Playbill]