It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business
Leonardo DiCaprio and Andy Garcia (pictured, left) and are set to star in the fourth instalment of The Godfather.
The story line is still being discussed by the writer Mario Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola, but it is understood that the sequel will be structured in the same way as the superior Godfather II, which told two stories through a series of flashbacks. One possibility is that DiCaprio will play the young Sonny Corleone (portrayed originally by James Caan in The Godfather) in one story, and Garcia play his son in the other story.
Coppola and Paramount have been toying with a sequel for five years now but it is only recently, through the intervention of Garcia, a friend of both Coppola and DiCaprio, that progress has been made.
And talking of the ubiquitous Leo...
Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star alongside Robert De Niro in a new Martin Scorcese project, The Gangs of New York. Shooting on the film, which follows an Irish gang of criminals from the beginning of the century to the present, will begin when Scorcese has finished the Dean Martin biopic.
King of the Swingers
Buena Vista's Tarzan has knocked Austin Powers out of his tree to win the weekend box-office title.
The studio has estimated a $34.1 million opening, which if figures hold, will make the film the second highest opening for an animated film. The highest opening was the company's own The Lion King, which debuted with $40.9 million in 1994.
The box-office success of this latest adaptation of the jungle classic is particularly impressive given its reliance on half-price children's tickets, and reports that the film's opening scenes - whereTarzan's parents are killed by a vicious leopard - have reduced children to tears.
Directors Kevin Lima and Chris Buck had originally just shown a tree house in ruins to imply the parents' untimely death, but test audiences were so confused that the pair decided to create the attack scene. Defending the decision, Lima said: "There is a yin and yang to these pictures that is good. When these awful things happen you can feel the joy later in the film all the more It's a savage world out there, even when you walk out your front door and out on the
street, and kids realise that.''
Understanding may come harder to parents who still haven't forgiven Walt Disney for killing Bambi's mother.
Happy Days for Hef
Ron Howard's company, Imagine Entertainment, has won the rights to Hugh Hefner's story. Hefner the legendary editor and publisher of Playboy will act as consultant to the picture. Now what would Ron Howard's alter ego, strait-laced Richie Cunningham, say about that?
Eyes Lies
Of all the secrets and lies surrounding Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut (see last Thursday's news) there was one rumour which seemed to be plausible: that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play married psychologists who cheat on each other with their patients.
Now, in a forthcoming interview in Rolling Stone, Kidman claims that neither she nor Cruise play a psychologist, and that the rumour only became "fact" because they kept silent on the matter. All Kidman would confirm is that she and Cruise do indeed play a married couple, they have a child, and it is set in New York. Chances are that Kidman is playing double-bluff. It seems only time will tell. Eyes Wide Shut opens in the UK on 10 September.
Trailer park
The official site for the Mystery Men has opened. Based on the Dark Horse comic, Mystery Men stars Hank Azaria, Ben Stiller and William H. Macy as pathetic superhero wannabes who try to save a metropolis when its superhero-protector is kidnapped by the dastardly Geoffrey Rush. Click here for a brand new trailer.
Casting Couch
Will Smith and Whitney Houston will star together in a new romantic comedy, Anything for You.
Gods and Monsters director Bill Condon will be making a film about the first Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson. Her triumph in 1945 came at the same time the full horror of the Holocaust was coming to light and Myerson was seen as symbol of a new world. This, however, did not stop her being subject to discrimination and anti-Semitism in the South. Shooting on the biopic is set to begin in mid-September, when an actress has been found for the part.
Director Sally Potter has approached Elizabeth star Cate Blanchett to star in her new film, A Moveable Feast, based on Ernest Hemingway's novel. Blanchett is apparently keen to star, but has scheduling problems.
Anna Paquin the Oscar-winning star of The Piano, has joined joins Dougray Scott, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as one of the cast of the X-Men. Paquin will play Rogue, a high school girl with
psychic powers who is recruited by the comic heroes to help fight their archenemy, Magneto. Among Rogue's top attribute is the ability to absorb the powers of anyone she has contact with.
Courtney Love is set to star in the indie flick, Beat. The film is based on the love affair between Lucien Carr and Joan Burroughs, wife of Beat Godfather, William Burroughs. Love will portray Joan Burroughs, while Norman Reedus (8mm) will play Carr. Shooting starts July 26.
Michael Douglas will star in The Score, a tale of a gentleman thief who wants to commit one last big robbery.