***Kevin Smith Finds his HIT SOMEBODY Lead in Nicholas Braun ***Kirsten Dunst and Chloe Moretz Starring in HICK ***Mark Wahlberg May Star in Director Allen Hughes BROKEN CITY

Kevin Smith Finds his HIT SOMEBODY Lead in Nicholas Braun

by Adam Chitwood    Posted: November 29th, 2010

While Kevin Smith recently wrapped filming (and completed a first cut) of his horror film Red State, he’s also looking ahead to his hockey-centered film that will be his follow-up. Hit Somebody is a script that Smith has been working on for a while, that’s based on the Warren Zevon song of the same name, with lyrics written by Mitch Albom.  Via his most recent edition of his Hollywood Babble-On podcast with Ralph Garman, Smith revealed that he’s found his lead in actor Nicholas Braun, who Smith recently worked with on Red State. In fact, Smith said that he found “so much of [his Hit Somebody] cast making Red State,” so expect to see a few familiar faces once Hit Somebody rolls around (including podcast co-host and Red State cast member Garman, Smith confirms). Smith had this to say about casting Braun as his lead:

He’s this really really great actor who I love to death and he is the perfect lead for this script…he’s such a good guy, he’s a sweetheart and he’s fuckin so dope in [Red State]

Braun’s credits include Sky High and the short-lived TV series 10 Things I Hate About You. He’ll next be seen in the upcoming high-school dramedy from Disney, Prom.  Seann William Scott was previously attached to star in Hit Somebody after working with Smith on Cop Out, but chose to star in Jay Baruchel’s hockey comedy Goon instead when Smith decided to film Red State first.  For more on Smith’s upcoming projects, including more info on the plot of Red State, hit the jump.
While I’m not that familiar with Braun’s work, I like the idea of Smith casting a younger newcomer in the lead role of the flick. Fingers crossed he’ll nab a good deal of the young cast from Red State, given the pedigree of actors involved (Kyle Gallner, Michael Angarano, and Matt L. Jones). The song from which Smith’s screenplay is based tells the story of an aspiring hockey player named Buddy, who’s not the greatest when handling the puck, but has a knack for “beating people up.”  Smith said that he plans to start shooting the film in “July, August, [or] September” of 2011.
Smith recently submitted Red State to Sundance and hopes to sell the film to a distributor at the festival in January. In fact, he recently told Slashfilm that he plans to sell the flick right in the room at Sundance, auction style.  Smith is currently running a podcast mini-series on his Smodcast network specifically about Red State, on which he said the film is essentially about sex, religion and politics.  “The first 17 minutes of the movie are about sex,” Smith said, “the next 45 minutes to an hour…are about religion, and then the last third of the movie is pretty much about politics.” Entitled “Red State of the Union”, the podcast series is a self-described “film school” of sorts, wherein Smith brings on a member of the cast or crew from Red State each week to screen footage and discuss the filmmaking process on the flick. Recent guests included Red State producer Jon Gordon, and Director of Photography David Klein. For anyone interested in the ins and outs of filmmaking, the podcast is a definite must-listen.
http://www.collider.com/2010/11/29/kevin-smith-hit-somebody-nicholas-braun/

Kirsten Dunst and Chloe Moretz Starring in HICK

by Ramses Flores    Posted: November 29th, 2010

Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man) will star in the upcoming adaptation of Andrea Portes’ novel, Hick.   ThePlaylist reports that Dunst will be joining Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) in the film, who will be playing a “13-year-old Nebraska girl who gets more than she bargained for when she runs away to Las Vegas.”  Derrick Martini (Lymelife) is set to direct the coming-of-age drama, which has been adapted to screen by Portes.
Dunst can currently be seen alongside Ryan Gosling in All Good Things.  She is also set to star in Walter Salles’ (The Motorcycle Diaries) adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and earlier this year she replaced Penelope Cruz in Lars Von Trier’s (Antichrist) upcoming sci-fi disaster film Melancholia. You can hit the jump to read the full synopsis for Hick.

Here’s the synopsis via Amazon:

Portes’s chilling debut tracks a 13-year-old Nebraska girl’s hard-going life on the road. Young Luli knows losers—her “aging Brigitte Bardot” mother, Tammy, and her father, Nick, go at each other every night at the Alibi, the watering hole in hometown Palmyra, Neb. Tammy runs away one morning, and Nick soon follows, leaving Luli alone at home with the Smith and Wesson .45 her Uncle Nipper gave her. Pistol in tow, she hitches rides heading west to Vegas.
A crooked man (literally; he “looks like an italic,” says smart-alecky Luli) named Eddie picks her up briefly before throwing her out of the car. Next comes cocaine-snorting grifter Glenda, who enlists Luli as an accessory to a robbery that goes awry. Glenda takes Luli under her wing. The two cross paths again with Eddie, who rapes Luli and ties her up in a secluded motel. Glenda comes to her rescue, but the confrontation with Eddie ends badly.

http://www.collider.com/2010/11/29/kirsten-dunst-hick-chloe-moretz/

Mark Wahlberg May Star in Director Allen Hughes BROKEN CITY

by Ben Brown    Posted: November 29th, 2010

Funny thing about being a movie star–one year, you can earn nothing but complete critical and commercial success for your work, and then another…well, you don’t. Perhaps not an actor working today has ridden the ladder of ascension and descent quite as drastically as Mark Wahlberg; 2006 saw such well-regarded turns in Invincible and The Departed, the latter of which he managed to snag a Best Supporting Actor nod out of. Of course, as we all know, Wahlberg followed up his newfound success with such cinematic delights as Max Payne, The Lovely Bones, Shooter, and the grandturkey of them all, The Happening (a project he himself came to bash).
Thankfully for Wahlberg, 2010 is looking a bit more like 2006 than 2007, 2008, or 2009– aside from turning in nice comedy work in hits such as Date Night and The Other Guys, Wahlberg’s also been stirring up a bit of Oscar talk for his turn in David O. Russell’s upcoming The Fighter. And now, just to keep things interesting, it looks as if Wahlberg is eyeing a return to the land of action: in an interview with MTV, Wahlberg re-expressed his interest in the Allen Hughes-helmed Broken City. Hit the jump for more of Wahlberg’s quotes, as well as some of my brief thoughts.
Says Wahlberg to MTV:

“There’s this other thing, ‘Broken City,’ that I want to do… at the end of next year with Allen Hughes directing. It’s on the Black List. It’s one of the best unproduced screenplays… It’s an amazing piece of material that should attract amazing talents. Hopefully we’ll get that thing together.”

The script, penned by Brian Tucker, would entail Wahlberg’s Billy Taggart, an ex-cop and low-rent private investigator, being hired by a shady mayoral candidate to investigate his wife’s infidelity. As is the case with any good noir, sex, corruption and secrets ensue.
Consider me psyched. Hughes, along with his brother Albert, is the man behind both 2001’s From Hell and earlier this year’s The Book of Eli, two of the more interesting and (I would argue) rather under-appreciated genre gems of the past few years. To see as star as charismatic and likable as Wahlberg team with such a visually energetic and unique vizualist sounds…well, tantalizing, to say the least.
And come on–you have to admit this sounds a bit more interesting than that other action-fest Wahlberg just signed on to…
http://www.collider.com/2010/11/29/mark-wahlberg-broken-city-allen-hughes/