Following the blockbuster success of “Hannibal,” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is surging forward with a slate of high-profile projects, put together at almost dizzying speed.
Now it’s getting deep into business with Bruce Willis and his producing partner Arnold Rifkin on not one but two new pictures, which the two partners will produce and Willis will star in. These projects come on the heels of the Willis-starrer “Bandits,” which MGM plans to release this fall.
The studio has decided to spend up to $1.5 million for the movie rights to Robert Crais’ novel “Hostage,” a thriller that centers on an LAPD police negotiator who gets in the middle of a stand-off with three criminals who have taken a Mafia accountant hostage.
MGM has also hired Doug Richardson (“Money Train”) to adapt his thriller “True Believers,” about a Charles Manson-like psychopath who tries to get a prominent U.S. senator’s wife pregnant with his baby.
In stepping up to the plate to buy these projects, the studio is also committing itself to two big paydays for Willis, who is a member of the $20 million-a-movie club.
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Former 20th Century Fox chairman Bill Mechanic is also shelling out for some high-profile projects as he sets up the financing for his new production company, Pandemonium.
Just months after the well-respected Mechanic exited Rupert Murdoch’s studio to launch his own shingle, he has bought the rights to “Fire,” author Sebastian Junger’s first book since “The Perfect Storm.”
The movie will center on a gigantic wilderness fire that breaks out in the Northeast, and the firefighters who have to put it out.
The Junger book, due out in the fall, applies the same, almost forensic technique he brought to “Storm.”
Bridget Jones is back in business.
The spunky heroine of Helen Fielding’s book “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” played by Renee Zellweger in the movie version that has been a hit for Universal Pictures, may be returning to the big screen.
Working Title Films is developing a sequel to “Bridget,” titled “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” based on another Fielding book that follows the ditsy blonde’s adventures after she splits with boyfriend Mark Darcy and ends up in jail in Thailand.
No word on whether Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth will return for the sequel.
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These days, if you’re a movie star, it almost pays not to work. Actress Linda Fiorentino (“Unforgettable”) has been sued by German production company Artoko Film Productions for allegedly forcing it to close down production on “Til the End of Time,” a biography of artist Georgia O’Keefe that she was meant to star in.
Contributing columnist Stephen Galloway can be reached at [email protected].
