Van Diem gets Game; admen turn Studman

Posted by Reinaldo Massengill on Thursday, August 8, 2024

MICHAEL VAN DIEM, the Netherlands-based director who won an Oscar for his student film and won the foreign language film Oscar this year for “Character,” will now see if there’s gold in those Hollywood hills as well. He has signed to make his American directing debut with “The Spy Game,” the Beacon Communications drama to star Robert Redford. The film is being produced by Marc Abraham of Beacon and Doug Wick of Red Wagon Prods.

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The film, described as a widescale international thriller, is based on a Michael Beckner script about a veteran CIA agent who as his final act of duty must rescue a protege. Van Diem, whom Redford approved, is now polishing the script and will bring Beckner back for a final pass as they wait for Redford to decide on his next film, with “Spy” firmly in his sights. The director is repped by Brad Gross of Sanford-Gross & Associates and attorney Linda Lichter.

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MOSTOW WEARS GENES: While “Breakdown” helmer Jonathan Mostow will next direct “U-571,” an epic-sized WWII adventure at Universal, he’s attached as director on an untitled pitch, which his Mostow/Lieberman Prods. partner Hal Lieberman will produce at DreamWorks.

The script will be written by Rusty Gorman and Jon Felson, and was brought in by MLP president Abby Wolf, who’ll exec produce. The thriller set in a small town is about genetic research that goes monstrously awry. The project will be supervised by DreamWorks’ Margaret French Isaac and Eric Handler. The scribes were repped by UTA’s David Kramer.

BENTON PINES FOR KIDMAN: Robert Benton is pining for a return engagement with “Practical Magic” star Nicole Kidman. She had a key role in Benton’s “Billy Bathgate,” and he’s written “Lovesick Blues” for her, hoping to make it at Paramount. Benton, whose last film was “Nobody’s Fool,” has targeted a spring start date for directing what is described as an obsessive love story set in the South.

Dish hears that Paramount is talking with Matthew McConaughey as a possible co-star for Kidman, who hasn’t committed yet, and she’s also being courted with equal fervor for Fine Line’s “The Painted Veil” with director Gillian Armstrong. Kidman’s next big screen date will be next summer when she stars with husband Tom Cruise in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.” She completes her celebrated run this Saturday of the Sam Mendes-directed play “The Blue Room” at London’s Donmar Warehouse. She moves with the show to Broadway at the Cort Theater on Dec. 13 for a limited run.

BOOKS BREWING: Does last week’s U-DreamWorks buy of the Linda Nichols novel “While You Were Out” for Gary David Goldberg and Tom Shadyac signal renewed book buying vigor? The hot read on the street Monday was “The Cuban Memorandum,” the new novel about a plot to assassinate Castro and Kennedy by Phillip Kerr, who wrote “The Grid” and “The Five Year Plan.” But several other titles had buzz building.

One was the rumored availability of screen rights for the kiddie classic “Eloise at the Plaza,” Kay Thompson’s novel about the pint-sized girl who lives at New York’s famed hotel. Thompson resisted countless overtures to sell screen rights over the years, but she died and now bidders are mobilizing.

At the same time, awareness is high for the new novel about cloning by “Scream” director Wes Craven. He sold it Simon & Schuster for $1 million on a pitch, and it’s already got something of a storied Hollywood history in that he was pitching it to Bob Evans when the Paramount-based producer suffered his stroke. Evans, back on his feet, will surely be one of the frontrunners for the property. And now that Tom Wolfe’s “A Man in Full” is getting critical raves, how long before screen interest returns, considering that “Bonfire of the Vanities” sold after a positive New York Times review?

EX-AD GUYS GO STUDMAN ROUTE: Jeff Spencer and Allan Zeleski, former Leo Burnett ad execs who moved West to become screenwriters, have been hired by Universal and Jersey Films to script “The Studman Brothers.” It’s an action comedy set in Texas, where three mechanically inclined but eccentric brothers create wild vehicles for a cross country race that will settle a century-old family feud.

The pic’s a co-production between Jersey and Creative Capers Entertainment. Spencer and Zeleski will turn the treatment by Sue Shakespeare and Andy Armstrong into a script for a movie that will employ the CGI effects Creative Capers is known for.

Spencer and Zeleski have done well since ankling the blurb biz, as their script “Learning to Fly” is with Universal and David Kirschner Prods., and “Low Lifes” at Sony and Fried Films. Spencer and Zeleski also have a two-year deal with Fox to create and produce TV programs. The duo’s repped by Metropolitan Talent’s Jeff Okin and attorney Howard Abramson.

DISHINGS: Writers & Artists’ Norman Aladjem and Larry Kennar have landed “Boomerang” director Reggie Hudlin, who continues to be lawyered by Stephen Barnes … Nathan Fillion, who was in “Saving Private Ryan” and next stars with Alicia Silverstone in New Line’s “Blast from the Past,” is becoming a regular on ABC’s “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.” He’ll be the love interest of the girl. Fillion’s repped by APA’s Pam Wagner, managed by Mark Schulman and Rich Silverman of 3 Arts … Joining the James To-back-directed Palm Pictures pic “Black and White” is William Lee Scott, the “Opposite of Sex” actor who just wrapped the Joe Johnston-directed “October Sky” for Universal. He’s repped by Endeavor and managed by Felicia Sager.

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