“The Imitation Game” star Benedict Cumberbatch will voice the title role in a new animated version of “Dr. Seuss‘ How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Illumination Entertainment founder and CEO Chris Meledandri announced Wednesday at CinemaCon. Pete Candeland and Yarrow Cheney are directing the new version of the popular holiday story from a sсript by Michael LeSieur. Universal is set to release the movie on Nov. 10, 2017. Meledandri, Janet Healy and Scott Mosier will produce, while Audrey Geisel and Chris Renaud serve as executive producers.
The Illumination reboot is the latest onscreen incarnation of Dr. Seuss‘ 1957 children’s book about a skinny, green-furred curmudgeon who hates Christmas so much that he strives to prevent all the residents of nearby Whoville from enjoying it as well. The story inspired Chuck Jones’ beloved 1966 half-hour animated TV special, which has become a holiday staple, as well as Ron Howard‘s 2000 live-action adaptation starring a heavily made-up Jim Carrey in the title role. (Rick Baker and Gail Rowell-Ryan won an Oscar for their makeup design.)
Cumberbatch, who stars later this year in Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” has become a popular performer in animation and stop-motion work. He played the dragon Smaug in Peter Jackson‘s “The Hobbit” trilogy and the tiger Shere Khan in Andy Serkis‘ upcoming adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” due in 2018. The actor is represented by UTA, Conway van Gelder Grant, and Robert Offer and Shelby Weiser.
Benedict Cumberbatch Comes Aboard ‘Guantanamo Diary’ As Producer
EXCLUSIVE: Benedict Cumberbatch, Adam Ackland and their company SunnyMarch have come aboard to produce Guantanamo Diary along with ZeroGravity’s Mark Holder and Christine Holder. They will produce with Michael Bronner (who is scripting the project) and Lloyd Levin and Beatriz Levin. The project follows the tribulations of 45 year-old Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a man who was a suspected terrorist and has been incarcerated at Guantanamo bay for 14 years without ever being charged with a crime or having the opportunity to defend himself in court. But that may change and quickly.
“Mohamedou’s co-counsel and I are flying to Guantanamo Monday with the first good news in almost six years,” said his attorney Nancy Hollander. “In 2010, a respected federal judge ordered Mohamedou’s release, but the government appealed that order and Mohamedou’s case has been in limbo ever since. We recently learned that his case will be reviewed by the Periodic Review Board, which provides a possible path to clear him for release, meaning he could be released this year. He will get a chance to speak directly to the panel members, who are drawn from several intelligence agencies. Mohamedou has been detained fifteen years without any charges. It is long past time for his release.”
Slahi is the son of a nomadic herder who has been subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques that include everything but waterboarding. His memoir claims that includes having his ribs broken, being kept awake for days, being blindfolded and taken out to sea where he was told he would be executed and was made to drink sea water, and subjected to sexual humiliation involving female soldiers.
The news of movement on the project also comes after CIA Director John Brennan told NBC News just yesterday that he would not engage in “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, even if the new Commander-in-Chief ordered it. “I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I’ve heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure,” he said in the interview.
Convergent Media is providing development funds for the project. Zero Gravity has been on fire as of late with the release of Beasts of No Nation last year, The Accountant, directed by Gavin O’Connor and starring Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick coming out wide from Warner Bros. in October and prep on an original Netflix series: Ozark which stars Jason Bateman. They are also in post on Headhunters Calling with Gerard Butler, J.K. Simmons and William Dafoe (directed by Mark Williams).
Bronner is a former 60 Minutes producer who has covered the Guantanamo story extensively. He later provided expertise and research for Paul Greengrass’s United 93 and also Captain Phillips.
В 2015 году книга была записана, в записи приняли участие Стивен Фрай, Колин Ферт, Джон Харт, Аллан Камминг, Джуд Лоу, Ник Кейв, Стэнли Туччи, Доминик Вест и Бенедикт Камбербэтч. Послушать книгу можно здесь
Ночь Шекспира или Шекспир жив! представление в честь 400-летия со дня смерти великого Барда, которое состоится 23 апреля в Стратфорд-на-Эвоне. Ведущим представления будет Дэвид Теннент. А среди гостей, которые будут выступать, будут: Хелен Миррен, Джон Литгоу, Анна-Мария Дафф, Йен Маккеллен, Джозеф Файнс, Бенедикт Камбербэтч.
Представление так же будет показано в 368 кинотеатрах в Великобритании и Европе, и по ВВС2. Начало в 22.30 (по Москве)
В силу некоторых обстоятельств, не успеваю ничего делать. Но за новостями слежу. А вот делать посты - не получается. Вот в этот раз хотела делать посты про сетлок, но не всегда получается. Ну раз так, то хотя бы буду делать самое основное и интересное.
Tanya Moodie (John’s therapist Ella) tweeted that she was headed to Cardiff this morning to do some filming for s4. Filming was at Mint and Mustard, an Indian restaurant on Albert Road in Penarth; a church that has been converted to flats on Albert Road in Penarth; and supposedly Portland House on West Bute Street again, but I don’t think we got any photo confirmation of anything there today. Daniel Hoffman-Gill (Gold Teeth) confirmed he was filming again today.Supposedly Ben was also filming at Portland House this week, but that’s unconfirmed. Today there have also been unconfirmed sightings of Martin at Mint and Mustard, Claire Pritchard (hair/makeup) on Albert Road, and Loo at an unspecified location in Cardiff. Alistair Petrie confirmed that he is not slated to appear in s4. Harry Gostelow has been cast in s4. To celebrate the start of filming, the BBC released a video from Mark . They also published a short article about it, which has a curious difference from the PBS article. BBC One posted an instagram pic of Ben’s s4e1 sсript from the readthrough on Monday night (and this time they learned their lesson and put a folder under the cover so that we can’t read the text through it, lol). Between the sсript and the slate used in Mark’s video, we have visual confirmation that Mark wrote s4e1, Rachel Talalay is directing, and the director of photography is Stuart Biddlecombe. Arwel Wyn Jones (production design) tweeted out a pic of the glass skull bottle seen in John’s flat in MHR, the SFX supervisor (likely Danny Hargreaves), a hanging lamp, and the Baker Street and Waterloo signs on the Underground. Loo confirmed that she will be on set tomorrow.
“We all have a past. Ghosts. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day…”
Filming for series four of Sherlock, the multi-award-winning hit BBC One drama produced by Hartswood Films, has started.
Sherlock will return to screens with three brand-new episodes promising laughter, tears, shocks, surprises and extraordinary cases…
Series four begins with the nation’s favourite detective, the mercurial Sherlock Holmes, back once more on British soil, as Doctor Watson and his wife, Mary, prepare for their biggest ever challenge - becoming parents for the first time.
Benedict Cumberbatch said he was “genuinely thrilled to be back filming Sherlock with all the cast and crew. I can’t wait for everyone to see season four. But you will have to wait… though not for long… And it will be worth it.”
The first of the three feature-length episodes will be directed by Rachel Talalay, who has worked as a director, producer, and professor in film and television for more than 25 years, having previously directed Doctor Who, The Flash and The Wind In The Willows.
Co-creators, writers and executive producers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss say: “Sherlock series four - here we go again! Whatever else we do, wherever we all go, all roads lead back to Baker Street - and it always feels like coming home. Ghosts of the past are rising in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson bringing adventure, romance and terror in their wake. This is the story we’ve been telling from the beginning. A story about to reach its climax…”
Sue Vertue, Executive Producer for Hartswood Films, says: “It’s taken a while to gather everyone together for series four, but I can confidently say I think it will be well worth the wait!”
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, which aired on New Year’s Day this year, was the most watched programme over the festive season with 11.6 million viewers and the highest-ever audience share for a Sherlock episode. The Victorian special was also released in thousands of cinemas around the world to complement the TV broadcast.
Sherlock is written and created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock is produced by Sue Vertue and the executive producers are Beryl Vertue, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for Hartswood Films, Bethan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales and Rebecca Eaton for Masterpiece. It is distributed internationally by BBC Worldwide.
Jimmy Kimmel Live to host Marvel-themed week, including cast of Captain America: Civil War Plus: Benedict Cumberbatch to debut 'Doctor Strange' trailer on April 12
Tuesday’s show welcomes Doctor Strange star Benedict Cumberbatch, who will unveil the trailer for the movie that will be out later this year, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Clark Gregg.
There is much hype around the BBC’s upcoming Shakespeare series The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses—a triad of Henry VI Parts 1 & 2 and Richard III—and rightly so. It stars a host of British actors—Benedict Cumberbatch, Hugh Bonneville, Tom Sturridge, Judi Dench, Sophie Okonedo, Andrew Scott, Ben Miles, Sally Hawkins, Samuel West and Keeley Hawes, to name a few. The first cycle, the Henriad, starred Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Ben Whishaw and premiered in 2012; this, the second, airs in May 2016. Both are produced by Sam Mendes and his team at Neal Street Productions (Starter for 10, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Call the Midwife), with the most recent series being directed by English theatre director and playwright Dominic Cooke. While Cooke has enormous experience in theatre—from 2006-13 he was famously artistic director of the Royal Court, where he was responsible for staging world-reaching plays such as Enron, Posh, Clybourne Park, Constellations, That Face and Jerusalem—The Hollow Crown marks his first foray into directing for the screen. We predict it won’t be his last. Cooke recently met writer and director Kinvara Balfour at the V&A to discuss his latest project.
“I got a phone call from Sam Mendes,” he said. “I was standing at Acton Central station and he said, ‘We just go the go-ahead from the BBC to do the next Hollow Crowns. We decided we want one director to do all three films, and we want that person to be you.’ And I was actually almost in tears. I couldn’t believe that someone would ask me, who had never made a film before, to do something on that scale.”
The scale is big. With 89 speaking roles (“including the best coup: Michael Gambon doing one scene!” jokes Cooke), six battles and four coronations, set in some of England’s greatest locations (Alnwick Castle, Dover Castle, Wells Cathedral, The Great Hall in Winchester), it’s a bold and beautifully filmic production. “Hats off to Neal Street Productions and hats off to the BBC for being so courageous,” says Cooke. “It’s a real risk doing a project like this. Sam has been extraordinary in terms of his support and his brilliant judgement all the way through. Quite remarkable. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”
Cooke was well prepped for the role. “I was assistant director at the RSC, I was an associate director under Michael Boyd for four years and I am now an associate director at the RSC, so I have done a huge amount of Shakespeare. And as I did more and more, I realized that my responsibility as a director of Shakespeare is to realize the work for the here and now for an audience here and now. If anyone wants to read the play, they can do so—it’s going to live way longer than me. So my responsibility is to make a show for the present.” In doing so, he looked for to the cinema for inspiration. “I just wanted to make really thrilling films. I looked at a lot of war films, like the incredible opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, and Apocalypse Now.”
“We decided that really what these plays are about is the moral disintegration of England through the period of the Wars of the Roses, resulting in Shakespeare’s interpretation of Richard III (played brilliantly and chillingly by Cumberbatch) as a psychopath.”
“Shakespeare explores the nature of power, and what kind of personalities make good leaders,” says Cooke. “So Ben [Power, who co-adapted the sсript with Cooke] and I thought, let’s rewind and make sure everything in our films is about how that moral decay happens, moment to moment, to get to that point. And actually in history, when you look at Hitler, Stalin, the great psychopathic tyrants, the story begins 40, 50 years earlier.”
Shooting was not without its challenges. In a scene when Joan of Arc is burning at the stake, Cooke felt the heat. Literally. “Laura [Morgan] was absolutely brilliant. We melted a whole load of equipment that day. The fire was so strong that we actually broke it; the poor grip bought all this extra stuff in to place the cameras on and all of it was wrecked because the temperature was so intense.”
How much rehearsal time is there with an actor like Cumberbatch? When he has complex stunts to do whilst wearing a heavy costume, or a huge monologue coming up on a boat in the mist on a very cold day—is Cooke rehearsing on the day, minutes before the cameras roll? “I insisted on six weeks’ rehearsal. We didn’t have much time to stage the scenes when we were on set. Our schedule was insane. Hollyoaks had more time! There was one day when we shot 13 ½ minutes of screen time in one day.”
Next up, Cooke will direct On Chesil Beach, a film for cinema based on Ian McEwan’s novel, starring Irish actress-of-the-moment Saoirse Ronan. He’s ready for the next challenge. “I think you have to be quite bossy to be a director. Most directors have some sense of leadership; you’ve got to stand in a room and lead some pretty complicated and very intelligent people. I think people often underestimate the intelligence of most—certainly good—actors. All good actors are very smart and they don’t suffer fools gladly, so you had better be on your A-game.”
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses airs on BBC2 in May 2016: HENRY VI part 1 (May 7), HENRY VI part 2 (May 14) and RICHARD III (May 21)