In a story published online last night, Variety’s Sharon Swart named the 15 films across both the Cannes Film Festival and the Cannes market that are expected to attract the most attention from buyers. At least one of the titles, Steve McQueen’s Hunger, has been bought in the hours since the story hit the website. At least one more, described as a “martial arts fantasy actioner, currently shooting in Romania…[starring] Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Japanese popstar Gackt,” sounds unspeakably (but not necessarily unsaleably) ridiculous.
Two more of the films on Swart’s list are related in that they were made the focus of unexpected and unwanted attention in January by the death of Heath Ledger.
One is Lucas Moodysson’s Mammoth, shooting of which was briefly suspended so that star Michelle Williams could return to Brooklyn to respond to her ex-fiancee’s death; when Williams returned to the set, the New York Post ran a paparazzi photo of the actress walking past a prop skeleton and bloggers smirked. The other is Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the film Ledger was shooting at the time of his death and in which he was replaced by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Neither film is finished, but both will look for distributors in the Cannes market.
Let’s see, what else? Blah blah blah, Charlie Kaufman (see also Anne Thompson’s profile of the first-time director). Blah blah blah, Che. Blah blah blah, “South Korean Western from horror-thriller maestro Kim Jee-woon” (!). Oh, and this! Swart describes Terrence Malick’s in-production Brad Pitt/Sean Penn film Tree of Life as a “fantasy-sci-fier.” That’s the closest thing to a detail about that one that we’re likely to get for awhile.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth