Phillip Noyce has become the third director attached to the C.I.A. thriller Edwin A. Salt, a movie that Tom Cruise is STILL attached too despite two previous attempts at making the film coming undone.

Noyce will be hoping to succeed where Peter Berg (who tried to rush the project through during the WGA strike) and Terry George failed.

The drama casts Cruise as a CIA officer who’s accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy. He must elude capture long enough to clear his name.

Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium, The Recruit) wrote the screenplay and I’ve gotta say, Noyce is the most suited man for this project over the two previous mentioned. He has some real credentials in this genre having directed Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger with Harrison Ford in the 90’s.

The film is setup at Columbia and once again it has to deal with potential strike problems as to whether it could shoot this summer or not. This could be a nice straight forward thriller to get Cruise back on track.

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Thanks guys for all your responses towards the Valkyrie trailer which I erroneously stated on Sunday was brand new. It would appear miraculously that it passed me by even though I’m normally a mad man in this war room I call my office, keeping up with the latest tactical developments in the movie world.

It would appear that the negative reaction which I always found a slight mystery originally stemmed from the bad word of mouth from said trailer and I can really see why. It’s clear that U.A. are formulating a plan for a better advertising campaign this time around.

I was informed today by a P.R. company working on Valkyrie that we can expect a new trailer for the movie very soon. Let’s hope the new cutting and the re-shoots that we know definitely have taken place have sparked new life into what at one point was looking like a potential “film of the year” candidate.

This one is not a lost cause yet.

From the writing and directing team that brought us The Usual Suspects, this WW-II Tom Cruise vehicle has been the subject of much discussion over the last 18 months and I’ve had a general sense of feeling from the web that most people are already saying the film was a failure.

I know that can’t be possible as it’s not out until February but with all the problems the film has endured during production and the negative press over Cruise playing a Nazi including his problems over shooting at German historical sites because of his religion, any mention of this film has left a sour taste in people’s mouths.

Now comes the trailer, courtesy of Variety and we can now officially start to have an opinion over what the film will be like.

There is a very slight sense of campness about the trailer but I think that is possibly heightened more by the awful music and the quick cutting together of scenes. I’m sure the final product will carry a far more serious tone, as The Usual Suspects did.

Tom Cruise mis-cast? That’s been at the heart of the pre-trailer discussion and I have to say they may have been right - or maybe Cruise just isn’t playing the character right? He’s a fraction of an inch away from his Austin Powers portrayal with some of his lines and his smile, he seems so off-cue here that I’m beginning to think that he should stop putting himself in his U.A. movies.

Maybe it’s time to let other casting directors find roles that are more suitable to his persona. Love the supporting players here though, so many great British character actors.I’m hoping for lots of Hitler scenes, to really crank up the tension on behalf of the conspirators. It’s not released till February 13th 2009 but it’s nice to see this project is finally heading towards a firm release date.

Filming began over a year ago on Bryan Singer’s next movie, his WW-II thriller Valkyrie but he hasn’t finished shooting everything he wanted just yet.

Variety’s Peter Bart has informed us on his blog that Tom Cruise has donned his eye patch once more and returned to film three extra days of shooting. No word on why there was a delay…

Cruise will be shooting three scenes in North Africa within the next three weeks. In one, his character, Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg, is badly injured but survives, a key moment in the film’s first act.

Bart goes on to tell us that people he trusts who have seen Valkyrie in it’s current form claim it’s “a superb thriller”.

He also notes that Cruise is adamant on releasing the movie through his U.A. on Friday 13th February 2009.

Smart, smart move from the Weinsteins - and how often have I been able to say that for the past couple of years?

As Bryan Singer keeps pushing back his World War II ensemble drama Valkyrie, those two prolific studio execs have been scouring the back catalogue of foreign cinema and recently picked up the distribution rights to a 2004 German movie titled Operation Valkyrie.

The movie tells the exact same detailed plot about the failed assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler during the height of his reign as next year’s Hollywood version starring Tom Cruise.

The German version stars Sebastian Koch who you will recognise from two movies that have already made it to English language shores Black Book and The Lives of Others and was actually developed as a made for t.v. feature.

With the right marketing campaign… this could put a small dent in Singer’s movie but let’s not lose our heads, it probably won’t effect it at all. Extremely rarely does the second film dealing with the exact same subject fare well at the box office because most people aren’t interested in seeing the same film twice, just with different actors in the same roles HOWEVER this is not the case with foreign movies.

Which is why so many are remade, glossed over with Hollywood stars and re-released with a big marketing campaign. Smart move from the Weinsteins because it should earn them some nice side cash for little work but this won’t effect Singer’s movie at all I don’t think. If anything, it might help it.

source - variety

From the outside looking in, I would guess that Tom Cruise and his closest pals and advises have been discussing over the last few weeks and aggressively pursuing what his next project could be.

We’ve heard much about the potential Ben Stiller comedy, another Mission Impossible yarn, we’ve heard this and that but this one seems to be a real leading contender.

The movie is The 28th Amendment and if talks go well it will see him play the U.S. President that discovers his country is actually being controlled by a Denzel Washington led super secret organization who kills everyone that gets in their way!

It will be directed by Aussie director Phillip Noyce (who helmed Washington in the late 90’s thriller The Bone Collector) and will mark the first on screen pairing of Cruise and Denzel…

Ironically, Cruise has been advised to play a U.S. President when he himself is probably at the lowest point of his public relations image.

The only bad news I guess about the project is that it comes from Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci who are spreading their seed everywhere right now but to give the devils their due, I loved what they did with Mission Impossible III for Cruise - a most satisfying refreshment of a tired franchise.

So the next question is… when can this get made?

Well the actor’s strike seems to have killed Peter Berg’s C.I.A. thriller Edwin A. Salt which Cruise was set to lead in February so he is free to begin whenever as far as we know, despite many potential projects looming over his head. Denzel will be finishing off his remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 soon and will be free however Noyce has at least two projects he previously said he would direct as his next features - The Art of Making Money and Mary Queen of Scots.

For this to be filmed soon he would have to budge on his prior commitments.

Still… ya gotta make room when it’s for these two giants. These kind of opportunities don’t come around very often, though we all know Tony Scott is the only man who should direct Cruise and Washington’s first face to face meeting!

source - moviehole

This Time Crimes project keeps coming up and it’s getting more and more fascinating each time we talk about it.

You may remember back in January we told you about the Spanish movie which had been picked up for a remake by U.A. in a big money deal - a flick that has been compared to something that Phillip K. Dick might have written. It was actually written and directed by young Spaniard Nacho Vigalondo and it revolved around a guy whose time machine travels him back in time nearly an hour and the disasters that occur because of it.

Basically it sounded 100 times awesome.

Now it sounds 1000 times awesome.

Vigalondo has revealed that David Cronenberg is in the running to direct!!

That’s all they have. No more details.

Cronenberg - time travel - the potential of Tom Cruise (he runs U.A. so if he wants to do it, he will) starring - from the writer of Children of Men - from the producer of American Gangster.

Does it get any better than that?

And let’s hope the original damn film gets a good theatrical release like my favourite movie of the year - the incredible Spanish horror The Orphanage managed to secure.

source - twitch

Well it worked so-so at the box office just two years ago and didn’t particularly defeat the press and public image of Tom Cruise which is undoubtedly at it’s lowest point of his career right now. Eyebrows are being raised, critics are chomping at the bit to say it’s a move of desperation because it really is beginning to look extremely likely that Tom Cruise will shoot a fourth installment in the Mission Impossible franchise before the end of the year.

And I know Cruise really loved his time on Mission Impossible III but maybe the critics are right because there is no denying it’s a direct result of the $15 million domestic bomb that was his first movie under the newly formed U.A. banner - Lions for Lambs - the lowest grossing Tom Cruise film in 25 years. I don’t think it’s possible to deny that, he has not in the past shown this kind of eagerness to shoot a sequel.

If you add that alongside the uncertainty over how well Cruise playing a Nazi German will go down (but a nice Nazi, of course) in next year’s Valkyrie, a movie not the kind of fodder that will attract huge numbers and that “Biggest Movie Star on the Planet” persona and you can see why the panic is setting in. If 2008 has shown us anything with George Clooney, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Jackman, Renee Zellweger, Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman from the back end of last year (with only Will Smith as the exception) it’s that the age of the movie star is beginning to fade and that could have disastrous consequences for Cruise.

Where in the past terrible looking movies that would star the biggest Hollywood names would still attract the highest audiences, it’s movies with interesting plots or inventive high concepts such as Cloverfield and 21 which can find a big audience that will make big profits. With few exceptions like Robert Downey Jr… there ain’t that many movie stars left standing.

So we have to wonder if another high profile Mission Impossible movie will really do Cruise that much good?

Despite terrific reviews, the brand name that is J.J. Abrams and a really intense trailer - Mission Impossible III still ended up being a $100 million short of the previous film in the franchise despite it’s success - which was enough to get him fired at Paramount in the first place and began the chain of events which ended with his biggest flop of his career.

Possibly because of the popularity of MI: III on DVD and from those who have seen it, Viacom Boss Summer Redstone (the guy severed Cruise from Paramount) last week said that he would welcome Cruise back to the drawing board for another Mission Impossible outing if the film comes together which is certainly looking likely with each passing day.

Personally and I’ve said this for an awful long time - I would advise Tom Cruise to 100% do the Ben Stiller comedy Hardy Men which was talked about last year. Let’s not forget that Tom Cruise is a brilliant comedic actor, something we haven’t seen in YEARS from him but it’s how he introduced himself to the world in the 80’s - and a populist comedy done in the Judd Apatow vein will entice back those who are fed up with the intense Cruise they have seen both on and off screen for the past four years.

A friendly Cruise - a Cruise they can laugh alongside rather than at for a change. I’m not sure another action vehicle will be of any benefit at all to him right now, I really can’t see anything better to win him back into the hearts and minds of so many than a movie that will make us laugh. Though I really did like Mission Impossible III and as a film fan, I won’t mind seeing him do that again but if I was his P.R. agent I would be dead set against it.

Martin Campbell has his second new project in consecutive days, this time one setup at U.A and Lakeshore Entertainment according to Variety.

Joel Surnow and Michael Loceff - two writers and producers on 24 have been plucked by Tom Cruise to come up with a contemporary spy thriller which very much mirrors what the actor did with J.J. Abrams and his feature directorial debut, Mission Impossible III.

There’s no word yet on the title but it’s said that the concept is original and it should have an impact creatively and commercially.

Again it’s another nail in the coffin of The Birds remake - at least for Campbell’s involvement anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind Campbell as a director, his movies have never particularly insulted me and I have found them entertaining but they are often kinda one-note and flat. He’s not a hack but he’s very much a safe guarded director who does his job perfectly fine.

But his remake of The Birds I could imagine being horrible.

Can’t really see how this is anything other than fantastic news.

Variety say that United Artists runners Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner have greenlit a huge and epic sci-fi trilogy from Ronald D. Moore, the creator of the hit revamped t.v. show Battlestar Galatica and a guy who was worked on sci-fi his whole career with credits on many episodes of Star Trek and the films Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Generations.

He also worked with the pair on the story of Mission Impossible II and has wrote the new version of John Carpenter’s The Thing.

No word yet on the subject matter or title but man it’s pretty exciting. 2009-2011 seems to be a sci-fi revival in the works and I love it!