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Logan Lerman Shares A Tank With Brad Pitt

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:32:04 GMT

Logan Lerman is joining Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf in Fury, the WWII tank thriller that David Ayer wrote and is directing for QED and Sony Pictures. Lerman will play Norman Ellison, an Army typist and the youngest and most inexperienced member of the crew who is thrust into being a tank gunner. Sony Pictures won the right to distribute domestically and in most of the world, with some territories belonging to QED, whose Bill Block took a big risk by paying $1 million for Ayer’s spec, and then watched it pay off quickly when Pitt committed to the $80 million film. QED will produce with John Lesher and his Le Grisbi Productions banner. Ethan Smith, Block and Lesher are producing and they are eyeing a fall production start.

The action takes place in 1945 as the Nazi regime collapses and the five-man crew of an American tank called Fury battles a desperate German army. Lerman, coming off starring with Emma Watson in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, reprises his signature role in the sequel Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters, but Fury moves him into adult roles. CAA reps him.

Source: deadline

Brad Pitt No Longer Attached To James Gray's Thriller 'The Gray Man'

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:03:32 GMT

With James Gray pretty much finished with "The Immigrant," packing his bags and getting ready to head to France for its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, he's beginning to look at what might be next on his slate. When we spoke to the helmer last year, his brewing thriller "The Gray Man" was something he said could very well be his next picture. "It really depends on Brad Pitt's schedule and it depends on my schedule and how quickly I finish up this current movie and budget and all of those kind of boring factors. But it definitely may happen, and in fact it is more likely than not to happen," he said. And while the movie may move forward, it will need a new lead.

Jeff Sneider of The Wrap tweeted last night: "BRAD PITT no longer attached to star in THE GRAY MAN for New Regency. Director James Gray seeking new leading man..." As folks may know, the pair were originally slated to work together on "The Lost City Of Z" before it fell apart, and while this is certainly a bummer -- we think Gray and Pitt would be a great duo -- the material is still pretty fascinating stuff. Based on the book by Mark Greaney, and penned by Adam Cozad ("Jack Ryan") the film follows a former CIA operative-turned ultimate assassin, targeted by a powerful multinational corporation, who must fight his way across Europe and past special forces teams from around the world in order to save the life of his handler and the handler's family.

So, Bourne-esque? Maybe, but Gray has an approach that he hopes will change up the game. He wants to shoot the film from the perspective of the assassin, a style he utilized in the car chase sequence in "We Own The Night." As he explained in 2011: "Almost every shot was from Joaquin's point of view, inside that car, and I want to make a whole movie with that POV."

Hopefully, Pitt's departure doesn't stall out "The Gray Man" for too long, and we presume Gray's longtime collaborator Joaquin Phoenix isn't quite the right fit for this movie (though, we'd sorta love to the actor do a straight up action flick). So, hopefully, this one finds a new actor to take it on and help get it rolling soon.

Source: blogs.indiewire

The Making of Brad Pitt’s World War Z, from Stunning Budget Overages and a Reshot Ending to Lots of On-Set Drama

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:17:41 GMT

“He took me through how excited he was when he read the book, what was exciting for him, the geopolitical aspect of it,” screenwriter Damon Lindelof tells Vanity Fair contributor Laura M. Holson in the June issue of Vanity Fair of meeting Brad Pitt to discuss the star’s troubled zombie project, World War Z.

Lindelof says Pitt explained, “‘But when we started working on the script, a lot of that stuff had to fall away for the story to come together. We started shooting the thing before we locked down how it was going to end up, and it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.’” The actor asked him to watch an edit, and told him, “The thing we really need right now is someone who is not burdened by all the history that this thing is inheriting, who can see what we’ve got and tell us how to get to where we need to get.” Lindelof tells Holson the ending was abrupt and incoherent, but more importantly they were missing a large chunk of footage.

In her revealing report, Holson also speaks to director Marc Forster and Paramount executives Marc Evans and Adam Goodman about the many problems that plagued the set—which included re-writing and reshooting 40 minutes of the film to find a coherent ending—and, most astonishingly, how the budget ballooned to around $200 million. While closing down the production in Malta, for instance, the wrap-up crew found a stack of purchase orders related to the cast and extras that had been casually tossed into a desk drawer and forgotten; the amount totaled in the millions of dollars. Marc Evans, president of production at Paramount, was shocked. He calls the overages an “unthinkable action” which needed to be addressed immediately. “It was literally insane. Adam [Goodman, president of the Paramount Film Group] and I believed we’d gotten out of Malta good, and I found out we weren’t. That is a nightmare.”

When it came time to watch the director’s cut, Holson reports, the room was silent. “It was, like, Wow. The ending of our movie doesn’t work,” says Evans. “I believed in that moment we needed to reshoot the movie.” After 10 minutes of polite discussion, everyone left. “We were going to have long, significant discussions to fix this,” he recalls thinking.

“I said to them, There are two roads to go down here,” says Lindelof. “Is there material that can be written to make that stuff work better? To have it make sense? To have it have emotional stakes? And plot logic and all that? And Road Two, which I think is the long-shot road, is that everything changes after Brad leaves Israel.” That meant throwing out the entire Russian battle scene—or about 12 minutes of footage—and crafting a new ending. “I didn’t think anyone was going to say, ‘Let’s throw it out and try something else,’ ” Lindelof recalls. “So when I gave them those two roads and they sounded more interested in Road B”—which meant shooting an additional 30 to 40 minutes of the movie—“I was like, ‘To be honest with you, good luck selling that to Paramount.’ ”

Source: vanityfair

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie termed as 'irresponsible' by neighbours

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:48:36 GMT

The couple were reportedly racing vehicles and motorbikes along one of America's most fragile coastlines. Pitt, 49, was photographed on Easter Sunday teaching son Knox how to drive while Maddox and Pax rode motorbikes on the beach near their California ranch, reported Radar Online. "I am not sure if it is illegal to drive on the beach in Santa Barbara County but it is certainly reprehensible. It is massively damaging to the environment and we'd hope the people who own houses on the shoreline acted more responsibly," said a source.

"I've heard of neighbours complaining about being bullied off the state beaches," Mike Lunsford, president of the Gaviota Coast Conservancy said. "I think they have some over-zealous security people who have legitimate concerns about their safety and paparazzi invading their privacy but there have been incidents where people have been just going for hike and one friend was rudely accosted," he added. "Neighbors have all complained because Brad started trying to keep them off the beach below his house there. This is a beach that is everyone's and they've enjoyed it for years," added the source.

Source: mid-day

Shia LaBeouf May Join Brad Pitt in David Ayer’s Fury

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:29:37 GMT

End of Watch director and Training Day screenwriter David Ayer already has Brad Pitt lined up for his next film, the WWII drama Fury. Now Shia LaBeouf is negotiating for a co-starring role. "The story follows the commander of a Sherman tank and its five-man crew on a mission behind enemy lines in April 1945 as Nazi Germany collapses," Variety reports. "LaBeouf would play a member of the crew." We have to assume Shia was approached because of that deft vehicular work in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Source: vulture

Brad Pitt-Produced 'Big Men' Explores Greed in West African Oil Exploration

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:23:11 GMT

When Rachel Boynton first went to Africa to research her documentary Big Men, which premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, she had three unrelated phone numbers. Six years later, she had a film that takes an expansive, yet focused, look at how oil makes its way from deep in an ocean off the coast of Ghana to the U.S. stock exchange, and the ensuing complications.

The film explores the connections between the Ghanaian company who finds the oil field, the small Texas oil company who drills, the Wall Street private equity partners who invest, and the Ghanaian government officials who manage the contracts. The glitch, depending on your seat, comes when Ghanaian leadership changes, the justice department is called in to investigate allegations of corruption on the part of the U.S. firm and credit contracts due to the financial crisis.

The film’s backdrop is the increasing violence in Nigeria, where militants are stealing from and blowing up foreign gas pipelines in an effort to siphon off profits from the corrupt Nigerian government who isn’t sharing the riches. The doc simultaneously looks at the process and implications of western companies investing in foreign oil ventures, profiles an African country trying to profit after centuries of exploitation and watches as everyone navigates how to slice the billion-dollar pie.

Boynton also looks at the psychological motivations for the individual players, all striving to be masters of the universe, or in West African parlance, "big men." Rolling Stone spoke with Boynton about her cautious optimism for Ghana, the legacy of Milton Friedman and working with Brad Pitt and Sebastian Junger.

The Fossil Fuel Resistance
How did you become interested in oil and this particular topic?
In 2006, when I started making the film, oil prices were really, really high. You couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing about the price of oil. You couldn’t pick up a newspaper without seeing it in the headlines. I’d just made this movie that was about democracy and marketing, called Our Brand is Crisis, and I knew I wanted to make another film with big ideas and big questions about the way the world works. Oil is the most important resource on the planet, and I had never seen a movie that really looks at the question of what happens when the most valuable resource on the planet is found in one of the poorest places on the planet.

You open the film with a quote from Milton Friedman about greed. What does that quote mean to you in connection with this story?
Well, I start with two quotes. Milton Friedman, when he talks about greed, he is talking about it as the engine in society, he is talking about it as greed is good. It motivates our economy and it motivates our society. I felt very strongly that you needed another quote after that to balance out that attitude, because there is a cost, there is a price. Basically he was Mr. Individualism. But at a certain point you also have to think about how we are all connected to each other, and what the price of an over-emphasis on maximum individual profit might be. The second quote is a quote from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It’s about these guys who go looking for gold and it destroys their relationship. I think of the movie as a modern day Treasure of the Sierra Madre with real people and access over the course of six years.

It also becomes clear that Ghana pushing back on foreign companies in an effort to correct centuries of imperialism and exploitation, and although this causes problems for western powers, the Ghanaians are really just trying to right their own ship. Absolutely. The fundamental question in the movie is who gets what out of the deal and so then the question is whom is pitted against whom in the deal. You’ve got private capital – Wall Street – you’ve got the oil company, you’ve got governments and you’ve got the people. And those are the principal entities looking to get a piece of the pie.

You explore the fallout from oil exploration in Nigeria. Do you think that the same thing could happen in Ghana?
Well sure. The same thing can happen anywhere where oil is discovered. But I’m cautiously optimistic about Ghana. They are asking for advice from all sorts of people and there is really a vibrant press there, and people who are asking questions of the government, watchdogs basically. The problem is there is just so much money involved. And there’s just a lot of practical things that need to be addressed, like you have to teach your ministry of finance how to do the accounting properly. I’m optimistic about Ghana but there is a danger that it could become Nigeria, just as there is a danger that anywhere where a massively valuable resource is found can become a hotbed for corruption.

But this seems like an ongoing issue in international development, are there any proactive measures that can be taken?
There are certain groups for example, Revenue Watch or EITI, that have initiatives called 'Publish What You Pay' where they are encouraging oil companies to publish how much money they pay in any country, so the people can hold governments accountable for how much money they get. The movement for transparency is a big help. But that question doesn’t address the question of the division of profit between the country and the company and what is a just and right distribution of profits. To me this isn’t just a movie about Africa, or what is going to happen in Ghana, it is also a movie about how New York and Texas are connected to these places.

It seems like everyone is trying to be the "big men," the Texas landmen, the Nigerian militants, the Ghanaian people, the politicians. . . .
The tag line on the poster is 'Everyone wants to be big.' And it’s funny because the term 'big man' or 'big men' is a very common term in Nigeria and in Ghana. There it’s an every day phrase. But it’s not just everyone in Nigeria or everyone in Ghana. It’s Milton Friedman. Everyone wants to be big, everyone wants more for his own people. And so then the question becomes how do we define who our own is?

I found the story of the man who originally discovered the oil to Ghana to be really heartbreaking. He wanted the recognition so badly and wasn’t getting it. It is interesting when you think about the movie, when you think about what makes someone big, it’s money and it’s reputation. Both of those things, they get mentioned over and over again. And they are linked but they are not the same thing.

Speaking of big men, Brad Pitt executive-produced the film. What was his involvement?
I was traveling with Sebastian Junger in the Niger Delta, he was writing an article for Vanity Fair, and he had had some correspondence with this guy called Jomo Bomo, who was basically the publicist for the militants. He had written Jomo Bomo saying, hey, can I get access and Jomo Bomo had written back saying, I don’t know who you are, you are out of luck. And then apparently Jomo looked him up on the internet and read about The Perfect Storm. Once he figured out who Sebastian Junger is he said, 'Oh, no problem, I’ll give you access, just give me a signed copy of your book.' So I thought, I need to bring on an executive producer that means something, and I went home and I asked Brad Pitt to executive produce the movie, and he read the pitch and he got really excited.

Do you think you’d see a story like this in Brazil, which has recently developed an oil economy, or is there something about this story that is unique to Africa?
No. The question of corruption is a question everywhere. It is not just about Africa, or Brazil, because everyone wants to be big. And oil money is just so huge. We are talking about billions of dollars. That doesn’t happen very often, and the potential for corruption increases exponentially.

Source: rollingstone

Brad Pitt Makes a Surprise Appearance at CinemaCon to Promote 'World War Z'

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:47:48 GMT

CinemaCon convention on April 15 in Las Vegas was in an uproar with people shouting "I love you!" as Brad Pitt surprisingly came up on the stage. The 49-year-old actor made an unannounced appearance to promote his upcoming film "World War Z" in the conference, which was held at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

"Listen, five years ago, I knew absolutely nothing about a zombie. Today, I consider myself an expert," Pitt said, smiling at more than 6,000 exhibitors who packed the theater for Paramount's panel. "This whole thing started because I just wanted to do a film that my boys could see before they turned 18, one that they would like, anyways. And they love a zombie."

The Golden Globe Award-winning star revealed that he and the crew had to tackle some challenges before starting the production. "We were faced with two Herculean challenges: How do we keep the global, spectacular, dynamic scope of the book and how do we originate a genre that's been done quite often and really, really well?" he said.

Before finally showing the footage of the film which is adapted from Max Brooks' book of the same title, Pitt said, "I think you're going to like this as much as my boys are going to." As the lights went down, the audience was led to see many horrifying scenes, which included a glimpse of zombiefied people chewing through car windows. Directed by Marc Foster and penned by Matthew Michael Carnahan and J. Michael Straczynski, "World War Z" hits U.S. theaters on June 21.

Source: AceShowbiz

Brad Pitt Lets Loose At The 2013 MTV Movie Awards

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:22:14 GMT

Enjoying a less formal affair after awards season, Brad Pitt attended the 2013 MTV Movie Awards at Sony Pictures Studios. As he flashed his handsome smile for the paparazzi before strolling into Sony Pictures Studios to catch all the action, the “Fight Club” stud provided plenty of eye candy and took the stage to present a coveted popcorn trophy.

Always a memorable occasion, the MTV Movie Awards will be hosted by “Pitch Perfect” starlet Rebel Wilson, so literally anything can happen. At this year's ceremony, Best Villain nominees include Javier Bardem for "Skyfall," Leonardo DiCaprio for "Django Unchained," Marion Cotillard for "The Dark Knight Rises," Tom Hardy for "The Dark Knight Rises," and Tom Hiddleston for "The Avengers."

Source: celebrity-gossip

William Hague could be the new Brad Pitt

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:42:44 GMT

FOREIGN Office insiders joke that William Hague has been spending almost as much time with the gorgeous Angelina Jolie in recent weeks as has her husband Brad Pitt.

Source: express

Sony pick up Brad Pitt's Fury

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:46:05 GMT

The studio are delighted to have snapped up domestic and many international rights to David Ayer's World War II action movie, which will see Brad Pitt play the commander of a Sherman tank and its five-man crew on a mission behind enemy lines. Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad said in a statement: ''We loved this script from the moment we read it.

''This is epic and authentic storytelling at its finest and we couldn't be more excited to be in business with David Ayer and Brad Pitt on this incredible story of sacrifice and heroism.''QED International - who bought Ayer's script in February - are producing with John Lesher's Le Grisbi Productions and Ethan Smith. Alex Ott is co-producing. Filming on the picture - which is set in April 1945 as Nazi Germany collapses - is due to begin in September this year, and a release date has been set for November 14 2014. Before then, 'Inglorious Basterds' actor Pitt can be seen in 'World War Z', which opens in cinemas this June.

Source: tv3