MGM has signed a two-year second-look film production deal with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment. As a direct result, several Plan B projects have now been set up at the studio.
The most high profile of these is a new romance drama that hails from celebrated “Minari” writer/director Lee Isaac Chung.
That film centres on a young man lost in New York City’s corporate drudgery who finds love with a beautiful young woman from Hong Kong.
After making a name for herself in the comedy realm, Tiffany Haddish has found her first major role in a sci-fi pic. Deadline is hearing she is in final negotiations to star in MGM, Plan B and Annapurna’s adaptation of National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson’s novel Landscape with Invisible Hand. Bad Education director Cory Finley is writing and directing.
Plan B and Annapurna landed the rights in 2017, developed together and brought the package to MGM. The pic will be released theatrically in the U.S. via MGM’s distribution and marketing joint venture United Artists Releasing. Plan B and Annapurna are producing.
The next film from Oscar-winning La La Land and Whiplash filmmaker Damien Chazelle is being pushed out of 2021 and into 2022, with Paramount Pictures shifting its release date a full year.
The highly anticipated film is described as an epic set in Hollywood during the 1920s, as Tinseltown is on the cusp of transitioning from the silent era to “talkies.” It follows a number of Hollywood figures both historical and fictional, and Chazelle already has Brad Pitt set in a lead role with Margot Robbie in talks to co-star.
The R-rated drama was originally set for release on December 25, 2021, but likely due to COVID restrictions delaying filming, Paramount has pushed the movie’s release date back a full year to December 25, 2022 with a wide release on January 6, 2023. No doubt Paramount is positioning this one for a major Oscar campaign, hence the importance of the awards-friendly release date.
Cast and crew members were sent home this week due to a coronavirus scare on the Los Angeles set of “Bullet Train,” the upcoming Brad Pitt action-thriller.
The move was made after an asymptomatic crew person tested positive for COVID-19. In accordance with union protocol and out of an abundance of caution, the handful of cast and crew who had contact with the crew member went home and continued to be tested. Pitt was one of the cast members who had been in contact with the crew member.
However, there have been no additional positive test results at this point, insiders say. A source confirmed that Pitt has tested negative multiple times and was one of the members of the group who was sent home. Production on the film is continuing uninterrupted.
A spokesperson for Pitt declined to comment.
Nils Frahm has a shared a 14-minute performance from his upcoming concert film and live album, Tripping with Nils Frahm. In the new video, Frahm performs Fundamental Values, a track from his All Melody LP. As with the rest of the film and live album, the performance was shot back in December 2018 at Funkhaus Berlin – where Frahm also recorded All Melody.
In a press statement Frahm said, “It was about time to document my concerts in picture and sound, trying to freeze a moment of this period where my team and I were nomads, using any method of travel to play yet another show the next day.”
“Maybe tonight is the night where everything works out perfectly and things fall into place? Normally things go wrong with concerts, but by combining our favourite moments of four performances, we were able to achieve what I was trying to do in these two years of touring: getting it right! When you hear the applause on the end of the film you should know that I was smiling happily, being a tad proud and feeling blessed to share these moments with you.”
Both the film and the album are slated for release on 3 December, with the film premiering via MUBI and the album dropping via Erased Tapes. The film was produced by Leiter in association with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, the production company behind films such as The Departed, Moonlight and 12 Years A Slave.
Brad is mentioned in a great interview with David Fincher, one of his close friends. Read the entire interview at the link or just the Brad mentions below.
Brad Pitt, who has starred in three Fincher films, recalled times when they would “be doing a shot, and there would be the slightest imperceptible wiggle from the camera, and you could see Finch literally tense up — like, it physically hurts him.”
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Brad Pitt, who calls Fincher one of “the funniest [expletive] I’ve ever met,” often gets together with him for movie nights, during which, Pitt said, “He’ll be muttering the whole time: ‘That shot works. That’s a bad handoff. Why would you go to the insert of the glove there? Stabilize!’ It’s like watching a football game with Bill Belichick.” (Fincher described playing his favorite video game, Madden NFL, as “the only time I’m not thinking about movies.”)
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Brad Pitt told me that after his first meeting to discuss “Se7en” with Fincher, he “felt such a sense of relief and awe and love of film again.”
Atlanta star Zazie Beetz has rounded out the cast of Sony’s action-thriller Bullet Train starring Brad Pitt. Joey King, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Masi Oka, Michael Shannon, Logan Lerman and Andrew Koji are also on board.
Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch will direct and also supervise the script, which will be written by Zak Olkewicz.
The film is based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by best-selling author Kotaro Isaka. Ryosuke Saegusa and Yuma Terada of CTB Inc., who represent Isaka and the IP, are executive producers on the project.
