"Oh hey, girl. ...Me? Oh, just talkin' bout Noah. Afterwards, gonna grab some vanilla lattes and probably hit up yoges. Toodles!"
Today, Paramount and New Regency put out a press release saying they were partnering for Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, with screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator) coming on to re-write the script by Aronofsky and Ari Handel. The release doesn’t say anything about budget, but back in June, Deadline reported that Paramount was looking for a partner on the project, describing it as a “sprawling fantasy epic that will cost north of $100 million.” Presumably it still is, and New Regency is the partner. Keep in mind, Black Swan cost about $12 million, and Aronofsky biggest budget thus far was $35 million for The Fountain.
Aronofsky has been talking about the Noah project for years, which supposedly all started with a poetry contest he won at age 13 for a poem about the end of the world as seen through the eyes of Noah (he probably got as much pussy as me at that age). Anyway, SlashFilm pulled a few quotes from older interviews where Aronofsky discussed the idea:
Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky’s elegant farthouse feature about lesbo scissoring, made $315 million on a $12 million budget, so he’s earned himself the right to at least one esoteric period piece set in the world of renaissance calligraphy or whatever. Which is why studios were so delighted to have him onboard for Wolverine 2, a loser of an unwanted sequel for which they’d normally have to hire Joe Johnston or Stephen Sommers. But no one really expected him to direct that. Surprisingly though, the story he’s pitching now is perhaps the only kind more industry-trends approved than an unnecessary sequel of a second-tier comic book movie. It’s an epic adaptation (a “reimagination”, in dipsh*t insider parlance) of a royalty-free fairy tale. Noah’s Ark, to be exact.
I’m told that town is tantalized by a package circulating with Darren Aronofsky directing. Noah, an edgy…
HE SAID THE SECRET WORD! HE SAID THE SECRET WORD! (*turns on siren, runs around room with arms above head*)
…re-telling of the Noah’s Ark story. Aronofsky wrote a script that is getting a rewrite by John Logan [Rango, The Aviator, The Last Samurai, Gladiator, Any Given Sunday]. I’ve heard he wants $130 million [a huge budget -- Iron Man's reported production budget was $140m -Ed] to make it and that New Regency is eyeing a co-financing role. It was described to me as a big fantasy epic, and an opportunity for Aronofsky to create a world. He’s very passionate about it and wants to make it [his ] next film. His move toward Noah comes after Aronofsky recently flirted with Exodus, the 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment-produced telling of the story of Moses, his defiance of the Pharoah and delivery of the Hebrews from enslavement. [Deadline]
So, he was barely finished flirting with Exodus and already he’s tantalizing the whole town with his circulating (helicoptering?) package? Darren Aronosky sounds like a real slut. But I’m excited for an Aronofsky-directed Noah’s Ark story. Probably because of the image I get of Mickey Rourke giving his “I’m a broken down piece of meat” speech to a family of giraffes.
Yesterday we touched on the controversy over how much of Natalie Portman’s dancing in Black Swan was performed by a stunt double, a topic we quickly abandoned in favor of a thorough investigation of just how much of that thong butt in the Your Highness trailer was hers. But God forbid anyone care about my Pulitzer-caliber reporting, everyone’s still hung up on the ballerina crap. Darren Aronofsky and Mila Kunis have now both weighed in on the matter. To recap, here’s what the ballerina double, Sarah Lane, who earned $6,000 $25,000 for her work, had to say:
“They wanted to create this idea in people’s minds that Natalie was some kind of prodigy or so gifted in dance and really worked so hard to make herself a ballerina in a year and a half for the movie, basically because of the Oscar,” says Natalie Lane. “It is demeaning to the profession and not just to me. I’ve been doing this for 22 years…. Can you become a concert pianist in a year and a half, even if you’re a movie star?”
“I mean, from a professional dancer’s standpoint, she doesn’t look like a professional ballet dancer at all and she can’t dance in pointe shoes. And she can’t move her body; she’s very stiff,” says Lane. “I do give her a lot of credit because in a year and a half she lost a lot of weight and she really tried to go method and get into a dancers head and really feel like a ballet dancer.”
If I could paraphrase, “Meee-yow.” Here’s Darren Aronofsky’s two cents:
“Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that’s 80% Natalie Portman. What about duration? The shots that feature the double are wide shots and rarely play for longer than one second. There are two complicated longer dance sequences that we used face replacement. Even so, if we were judging by time over 90% would be Natalie Portman.
And to be clear Natalie did dance on pointe in pointe shoes. If you look at the final shot of the opening prologue, which lasts 85 seconds, and was danced completely by Natalie, she exits the scene on pointe. That is completely her without any digital magic.” [EW]
(*yawns, suppesses urge to wank dismissively*) And here’s Kunis’s:
After the last Wolverine movie, the idea that Darren Aronofsky would be directing the follow-up was the only reason anyone had any interest in it. Today, Fox issued a statement saying Aronofsky had left the project, effectively killing anyone’s hopes for it, and certainly squashing any possibility of it having some lipstick lesbo scissor action. (*sadly pours 40 out on copy of Jugs magazine*)
In a statement issued by the studio, Aronofsky said, “It became clear that the production of The Wolverine would keep me out of the country for almost a year. I was not comfortable being away from my family for that length of time.” (The film was reportedly going to be set in Japan.) “I am sad that I won’t be able to see the project through,” continued Aronofsky, “as it is a terrific script [by Chris McQuarrie] and I was very much looking forward to working with my friend, Hugh Jackman, again.” [EW]
Translation: “I was totally down to make a few million for slapping my name on your dumb sequel, but not if it means spending a year in a radioactive f*ckpillow swamp.”
Somewhere, Brett Ratner stares at his phone, thoughtfully eating a hot pocket.
“Oh hey, girl. Yeah, I blew off yoga. Vanilla lattes? Most def.” Darren Aronofsky looks like he’s off to drop Wes Anderson at his piano lesson. |via Superficial|
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