Cineplex Magazine May 2012

what’s going
on with...
OUIJA
Battleship, the Hasbro board gameturned-movie
hits screen this month,
which makes us wonder what
happened to Ouija, the other Hasbro
game set to become a film. The plan
was to make the occult game into a
special-effects extravaganza with a
rumoured $100-million budget and
McG as director. Universal dropped
out at that price, but now the film’s
been reconfigured as a low-budget
pic similar to Paranormal Activity and
Insidious, so it’s back on the sked.
FReSh FACe
JessiCA
Brown FindlAy
Fans of the British costume soap
Downton Abbey know 22-year-old
Jessica Brown Findlay as the outspoken
Lady Sybil Crawley. Soon movie
audiences will meet her, as she’s just
been cast as the female lead in
Winter’s Tale, the adaptation of author
Mark Helprin’s fantasy drama about
a death-defying thief who becomes
a messiah. Findlay beat out a bevy of
starlets, including Elizabeth Olsen and
Canadian Sarah Gadon, for the part.
Johnson’s
herCuleAn tAsk
Dwayne Johnson hasn’t starred in a swords-and-sandals movie since his
breakout film, 2002’s The Scorpion King. But the former wrestler takes
on the ultimate he-man role in Hercules, playing the titular strongman
in director Brett Ratner’s adaptation of Steve Moore’s graphic novel
Hercules: The Thracian War. The film shoots in New Zealand this October.
ALSO in tHE WORkS keira knightley plays a woman
with a secret in the romantic drama Safe Haven. The 1970s-set Blood Ties has
cast Billy Crudup and Clive Owen as brothers who get involved in the criminal
underworld to save their family. Illumination Entertainment, which gave us
Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, will make an animated 3D version of The Cat in The Hat.
Megan Fox and Zoe Saldana team up for the heist pic Swindle.
MAY 2012 | Cineplex Magazine | 47