Hat tip to Jeffrey Overstreet for the head’s up on Sunshine, which is (another hat tip to Overstreet) directed by Danny Boyle who also directed Millions—a favorite film of this blog. In a 2005 ComingSoon interview, Boyle (who, according to the Washington Post, as a teen seriously considered the priesthood but left religion behind as an adult) spills about the plot:It's kind of a space mission movie, in which they're taking a bomb the size of Kansas to reignite a section of the sun that's failing. It's got those rules of sci-fi, and it has a mystery attached to it as well. There's a mission that's failed seven years earlier and nobody knows what's happened to the crew, and at the end, they get to meet the source of all life in the universe. That has got to be worth 10 or 12 bucks or whatever you guys pay.Hmm, "the source of all life in the universe." Has me curious enough to pay the fee. The film is due out March 16.
Some other bits and pieces on films with the potential for God-talk: Nic Cage’s Next has a trailer. Oz is getting a retelling. Mummy III is slated to get started this summer—on the other side of the 49th parallel. Ice Cube’s set up for First Sunday, a film about “two men who bungle an attempt to heist money from a church” in which “they wind up taking its parishioners hostage, and those churchgoers slowly convert the robbers to see the error of their ways.” Janet Jackson’s joined Tyler Perry’s play-to-big-screen Why Did I get Married. Fox is bringing children’s picture book The Devil You Know to a theater near you. There’s some pics up along with interviews with novel-to-screen Inkheart folks (Brendan Fraser, Helen Mirren, ect). There’s another Beowulf (with Anothony Hopkins and John Malkovich) in the works; let’s just hope it has more accurate God-talk than Beowulf & Grendel, a good flick but one which I found a very secular rendition of the poem. The Heaven Project—a thriller about “a man who has everything he's ever loved stripped away from him” and in order to “earn his life and family back, he must face obstacles of mystical origins, endure countless tests of his faith, struggle with his own sanity, and explore the depth and the power of his soul—has started to put together its cast. Producer Ralph Winter talks Screwtape Letters (says it “isn't a light, happy, Narnia piece”) while Narnian Prince Caspian gets a new cast member (Pierfrancesco Favio as General Glozelle). And finally, Harrison Ford is toning up for Indy IV and, in the vein of fourth sequels, a retired rebel solider will play the villain in Rambo IV.
Blogwise, Elliot gives the real skinny on those Spartans of 300 and Peter Chattaway lines up tons of tasty morsels (how does he consistently pull all this together, ack?) including bits on Star Trek XI, FoxFaith’s Inquiry, a possible Justice League, and some great snippets from an interview with Into Great Silence filmmaker.
And now my fingers are exhausted from cut and pasting and my eyes are cross-eyed from looking at so many browser windows. Adios, amigos.
Update: Huh. Just discovered First Sunday's writer is David E. Talbert, whose work seems to be characterized by biblical themes. Worth keeping an eye on, I think.
(Image: copyrighted by 20th Century Fox)