Tom Cruise’s last three movies were the disappointing Valkyrie and Mission Impossible, and the über flop Lions for Lambs, but of course that didn’t keep Hollywood’s panties from going moist with anticipation about what his next film would be.  Answer: Wichita, from director James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma), co-starring Cameron Diaz.

According to sources, Cruise and Diaz have approved the script, and their deals are in advanced negotiations. While Fox has not officially dated the picture [they just boned one time after a keg party -ed.], sources said the studio is eyeing a summer 2010 release. The script has been through many machinations, but the most recent drafts were done by Scott Frank, with Mangold currently fine-tuning the script with Laeta Kalogridis (“Shutter Island”). Two-hander has several action scenes. [Variety]

Tom Cruise’s script approval is important, because he’s literally a dyslexic who believes alien spirits control our thoughts.  Oh, and don’t be embarrassed if you didn’t know what a “two-hander” is, I had to look it up too.  Apparently it means a script with two main characters.  I was thinking it was a guy with a huge weiner.  (*shrugs*)

Variety today has an article on the candidates for Tom Cruise’s next project (Len Wiseman’s Motorcade, The Tourist, or James Mangold’s Wichita), and more interestingly, a look at the Tom-Cruise-script-doctoring industry.  That is, the writers who get paid to tailor scripts to Cruise’s (*cough*) skills.

While screenwriters all over town have been taking haircuts on every deal [Editor's Note: I think that means they've been getting less], the script doctors in the Cruise derby [why are there doctors in a derby??] have been making as much as $250,000 a week, for two to six weeks, as they hone projects with notes from Cruise. Those writers include Scott Frank, who has been revising the action comedy “Wichita” for Cruise to play an action hero; Richard Curtis, who beefed up “Lost for Words”; and Paul Attanasio, who is now rewriting the rewrite that “Matarese Circle” director Cronenberg delivered. Meanwhile, Billy Ray continues to hone “Motorcade” with notes from Cruise. Christopher McQuarrie is doing the same on “The Tourist,” which the writer is also producing. (Ray and McQuarrie are not technically script doctors because they’ve been writing these projects for months.) [Variety]

Billy Ray reports that he’s been having trouble incorporating Cruise’s last few notes: “Your hair looks nice today.”  “I like your scarf, where’d you get it?” and “Do you like me? Check yes or no.”  Elsewhere, a rival studio is considering going forward with an undoctored script and casting another lead, a controversial strategy they call “acting.”

James Mangold, director of the upcoming 3:10 to Yuma, and Identity, a movie that sounds suspiciously like The Nines, as well as The Three, the film Charlie Kaufman's imaginary brother is writing in Adaptation, is currenty working on a remake of Murderball.  Murderball, of course, is the 2005 documentary about the sport of wheelchair rugby, one of my favorite documentaries of all time.

Mangold, for one, is planning on sticking pretty close to the documentary’s storyline. “I believe in the documentary. They isolated a great storyline. A lot of the characters and the stories and the way that movie works have been our guide.”

Yes, the documentary worked, so why screw it up?  Did you hear people walking out of the theater going, "Hey, that was great.  You know what'd make it even better?  If it was fake." 

I think someone saw cripples on film and got a whiff of a possible Oscar.  Oscar loves people with disabilities.  If Mangold could somehow turn this into a story about a retarded wheelchair rugby player who was a beloved entertainer who saved Jews from the Nazis in WWII, it'd be a sure thing.

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