By Romeo San Vicente
February 16, 2009
Julia Roberts may Eat, Pray, Love with Ryan Murphy
Even in a time when reading's popularity seems to be at a historic low, you can count on a zeitgeist-tapping best-seller to make its way to the big screen, especially when it's one of those warm, Oprah-beloved "food = emotional healing" books. Currently making the rounds in Hollywood is Elizabeth Gilbert's smash memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, tracking Gilbert's post-divorce global trek in search of meaning and fulfillment. Columbia Pictures is looking to snag rights to the book from Paramount, and the studio is already setting up its dream team to make the movie: Julia Roberts in the lead role, with gay Nip/Tuck creator and _Running with Scissors director Ryan Murphy behind the camera. Negotiations are ongoing, so nothing is yet set; still, if Columbia can get its ducks in a row, we could be love-ing Roberts on screen again before the end of 2010.
Beals goes from L to Eli
With the Showtime drama's final season wrapping up, fans of The L Word are girding themselves to face a world without Bette, Tina, Jenny, Shane, Kit and the gang. Still, the stars of the show, most of whom have gotten a definite career boost from the Sapphic soapiness, are moving on to exciting new projects. Jennifer Beals will reunite with her Devil in a Blue Dress co-star Denzel Washington for The Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic Western directed by Allen and Albert Hughes (From Hell, Menace II Society). Beals plays a blind woman seeking to protect her daughter (played by That '70s Show's Mila Kunis) in a desolate wasteland while Washington's Eli seeks a sacred book that could be the key to mankind's salvation. Also featuring Gary Oldman, Eli could gallop onto the big screen as soon as next year.
One more Woman of No Importance
If you've never watched the polygamy soap Big Love then you probably didn't become aware of Amanda Seyfried until the Mamma Mia! poster at the bus stop made you wonder, "Who's that girl?" Well now the accomplished young up-and-comer, who plays the eldest child of the four-way marriage on HBO's acclaimed series and who held her own singing opposite Meryl Streep in the Abba musical, has joined the cast of A Woman of No Importance opposite Annette Bening. Based on the Oscar Wilde play of the same name, it's one of Wilde's darkly funny satires of Britain's upper crust, full of mistaken identities and past sins coming back to haunt those who committed them. The film version is due this year, under the direction of Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy). And as long as Pierce Brosnan doesn't pop round to sing a few numbers, it's already on its way to being immune from critics looking to re-appropriate "no importance" in their reviews.
By the Power of Grayskull, here comes He-Man
Young gay boys whose first and favorite toys were the action figures in the He-Man and Masters of the Universe playset – even if the more prurient appeal of He-Man didn't become fully understood until later in those boys' lives – have a new pop-culture event to count down to: a live-action He-Man movie. Yes, yes, Dolph Lundgren and Courteney Cox starred in the beyond-awful 1987 version already. But this one could turn out to be actually good, given that the kids who loved this stuff as children are the ones running Hollywood now. There's no casting news yet; in fact, there's barely any news at all save for a few gay blogs going down the fantasy actor trail. But cards played correctly, this could be as big and, even better, as gay as 300. Details as they emerge. Meanwhile, actors with 50-inch chests, please contact your agents ASAP.
Romeo San Vicente is not unfamiliar with the nickname "Master." He can be reached care of this publication or at [email protected].
