Tag: Danny Boyle

SCRIPT LEAK: DANNY BOYLE’S 007 JAMES BOND

HOLLYWOOD – The script of Danny Boyle’s Bond 25 has leaked onto the internet.

The new James Bond director Danny Boyle is furious that the first draft of the script for the film has leaked onto the internet.

We publish an extract from the first few pages which we obtained from an anonymous source called Ewan McGregor.

EXT. EDINBURGH. DAY.

JAMES BOND runs down the street clutching a six pack of TENNENTS SUPER STRENGTH LAGER.

JAMES BOND (V.O.)

Choose being chased by Helicopters. Choose Walther PPK and a license to kill. Choose Bond girls and Austin Martins. Choose ejector seats and Union Jack parachutes. Choose Grace Jones and Christopher Walken. Choose Q and pens that fire lasers.

EXT. PARK. DAY.

SICK BOY and JAMES BOND have an air rifle and are aiming at random strangers. A skinhead with a bulldog.

SICK BOY 

(SEAN CONNERY accent)

Do you have the beasht in your shights 007?

JAMES BOND

Yesh.

INT. SLUM HOUSE. NIGHT.

James Bond is shooting up heroin. M comes in. 

M

007 what’s the meaning of this? You’re supposed to be on a mission in Brazil.

JAMES BOND

FFfffffffuck offfff.

Bond collapses. 

M

Oh my God, he’s overdosing.

SHIRLEY BASSEY sings ‘Perfect Day’.

 

THE END.

 

For more Script Leaks, Click Here. 

 

DANNY BOYLE DEVELOPING THE RUNNING DEAD FOR HBO

HOLLYWOOD – The Zombie Apocalypse is almost upon us but this time in a television war of Zombie dramas, with HBO going head to head with the AMC show The Walking Dead, an producing a Danny Boyle created rival entitled The Running Dead. 

A HBO exec spoke to Studio Exec on strict conditions of anonymity:

This show is not just a great big f*ck you to AMC [said Michael Lumbardo], it’s also going to be an exciting piece of boundary pushing television. But it is going to be a big f*ck you to AMC as well.

Danny Boyle said he was delighted at the opportunity to go back into the zombie world he’d created with 28 Days Later.

Me and Alex [Garland] made a breakthrough by making the zombies… well, less zombie-ish. The Walking Dead is okay, but the zombies are slow and people have to trip up or find themselves in an enclosed space. I’ve been talking to two sponsors – Nike and Red Bull – and we’re going to use that product placement as inspiration.   

Mr. Boyle was cagey about the details and nothing seems to have been decided in terms of casting though Ewan MacGregor has been rumored for the lead role. However Boyle reacted with a guffaw at the idea of re-teaming with the Shallow Grave and Trainspotting star.

‘We could cast Ewan’s post-me career as one of the undead,’ he chortled cruelly but truly. 

The Running Dead is due to air in the Fall of 2018. 

THE MAKING OF TRAINSPOTTING

HOLLYWOOD – In the latest in our celebrated Making of… series, we look at the behind the scenes drama that went into the making of Danny Boyle’s cult hit Trainspotting.

Pre-Production

Danny Boyle first read Irvine Welsh’s novel while in hospital having a tennis ball removed:

I’d been playing a doubles match with Alec Baldwin, Ridley Scott and Helen Mirren and boy does she have a powerdriver of a serve!  I’d heard this book was great but I thought that I hated anything to do with Wales and the hobby of trainspotting seemed a dull subject to approach cinematically. Little did I know that Welsh was actually Scottish and Trainspotting was actually about heroin. Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle were already on board and once the tennis ball was out I was raring to go.

Production

Ewan McGregor describes the process:

Filming often is very glamorous but I’m afraid Trainspotting was just as grim as it looked. Not only was it cold and our surroundings were often ugly but some of the cast were less than friendly. I had to do a series of films with a dead baby and Jesus the baby who played the dead baby was one of the most arrogant and self-involved people I’ve had the misfortune to work with. As for the infamous toilet scene… Danny thought it would be hilarious if everyone contributed to the set decoration, if you know what I mean. It wouldn’t be so bad but we delayed the shoot because of an electrical fault and this was the hottest July in recorded history.

Post-production

Irvine Welsh had a say on the music:

The music was very important to me and I had written the book with a playlist in mind. I was very into the Spice Girls at that period as well as Take That and New Kids on the Block, but no one wanted to hear me. Even to this day I can still hear some of those songs when I watch the film. Danny decided they didn’t go and he put the music in place. I was furious at the time, but I think in the end he was probably right.

For more of The Making of… CLICK HERE.

 

MAN COMPLAINS TRAINSPOTTING 2 TRAILER RUINED HIS EARLY 20S

EDINBURGH – The trailer for Trainspotting 2 dropped today causing a storm of protest with many men complaining that the prospect of the new film ruined memories of their young adulthood.

Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Trainspotting has been eagerly awaited for over four hundred years, but the trailer caused disappointment as Ewan McGregor’s Renton invoked an all too predictable rant about Instagram and Facebook like some sort of Jeremy Clarkson type. Jimmy Spaggs led the complaints:

The original Trainspotting was very important for me and my pals. It got me into heroin. What with the Lou Reed song, overdosing looked great. Then shagging school girls and stealing from your pals, what more could you want? But this new film everyone looks old and tired. Old Ben Kenobi does his best, but there are all these shots that recall the original and it doesn’t do either film any favors. It’s put me right off drugs. I guess I’ll have to go onto crack now.

Trainspotting 2 will be released in 2017.

SCRIPT LEAK: TRAINSPOTTING 2

 Int:Renton is whistling merrily and making a salad in the kitchen of his respectable London flat. The door bell rings, it’s Begbie.

                                                                   Renton
Afternoon Sir. Lovely day isn’t it?
 
Begbie
F*ck you yer f*cking c*nt. Ave you got any f*cking heroin?
 
Renton
I’m a 43 year old charted accountant living in Fulham, Begbie. Where, pray tell, would I purchase heroin from?
 
Begbie
Aw f*cking come on Rents. Just a wee f*cking hit.
 
Renton
Bad day?
 
Begbie
Ack it’s been a right c*nt of a day. Two lads in my class failed their f*cking Maths exam and that c*nt of a headmaster got all up in my face telling me I’ve got to give them extra f*cking tuition after school.
 
Renton
Sounds like a ghastly business. I’m surprised you didn’t attack him.
 
Begbie
Aye I wanted to chin the c*nt but since I’ve been going to those f*cking anger management classes I’m a reformed f*cking character.
 
Renton
Indeed you are. Now do you want to eat now, or after our Yoga class?
 
Begbie
F*cking after you slow c*nt. There’s no f*cking way I can get myself into the Ustrasana position with a full f*cking stomach.
 
Renton
Fine then let’s go. By the way, can you still make it to the Chekov play at the Donmar on Friday night? Sick Boy has already bought the tickets.
 
Begbie
Aw f*ck me! I f*cking forgot. Which f*cking play is it?
 
Renton
The Seagull
 
Begbie
Ack. Aye all f*cking right but if it was that c*nt Uncle Vanya I’d have told you to go f*cking f*ck yourself.


FIN

TRAINSPOTTING 2 WILL FEATURE ACTUAL TRAINSPOTTING

HOLLYWOOD – Danny Boyle spills the beans on Trainspotting 2 to the Studio Exec, EXCLUSIVELY.

The excitement for the sequel of the Nineties hit movie Trainspotting, provisionally entitled Trainspotting 2, is palpable. But what can we expect? Well, director Danny Boyle popped into the Studio Exec Crack House to jaw about addiction, his new movie and literalism.

Tell us about the new film Trainspotting 2. What will be different? 

We’ve been talking about the sequel ever since we made the first film, but Trainspotting was ultimately about a very depressing subject, heroin addiction, so I very much felt that I didn’t want to go back and do another film about the same subject, unless I could do something new. Fortunately, Irvine Welsh was thinking along the same lines and he wrote a script which reflected changes in the lives of the characters, but also to some extent, changes in our own outlooks.

What do you mean?

Well, Renton, Begsby, Spud and Sick Boy were all in a certain stage of their lives at the end of the first film. Renton was on his way out of it, but we didn’t have a real feeling that he would escape. However in the new version all the main characters have grown and matured. None of them do heroin anymore, and they have replaced their addiction with a fascination in locomotives.

They’ve become trainspotters? 

Exactly. I laughed out loud when I read the script. I just thought perfect. Whereas in the first film trainspotting was the metaphor for a pointless time wasting pass time, in the second film they actually literally spend much of the film standing on platforms in Edingburgh and Crewe and spot trains.

Wow. But isn’t that a little difficult to make visually interesting.

Are you kidding? Trains come into stations, they go out of stations. Renton’s biro isn’t working. Sick Boy does his Sean Connery impersonation when he spots the Flying Scotsman. Spud shits himself when  he sees The Mallard. It’s amazing.

Trainspotting 2: Trainspotting will be released in 2016.

STEVE JOBS – SPOILER FREE REVIEW

STEVE JOBS – SPOILER FREE REVIEW – Following the amazing Ashton Kutcher biopic, few could have considered the idea of doing another film about Steve Jobs, except perhaps the creative team of Aaron Sorkin, Danny Boyle and Michael Fassbender.

Did they do the iGenius credit? Or was this a hack job with little to interest those not taken in by the self-proclaiming hype of the Apple founder?

Find out in our SPOILER free review:

There’s this guy.

And some computers.

And he’s called Steve Jobs.

For more Reviews, Click Here.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER TO REMAKE ALL OF ASHTON KUTCHER’S MOVIES

HOLLYWOOD – Michael Fassbender revealed today that he is going to devote his career to remaking all of Ashton Kutcher’s movies.

The move comes after Michael Fassbender starred in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, the remake of Ashton Kutcher’s 2013 movie Jobs. Speaking EXCLUSIVELY to the Studio Exec via Skype, Fassbender had this to say:

Every actor has an inspirational figure – for De Niro it was Brando, or DiCaprio it’s De Niro and for Johnny Depp it’s Cesar Romero. Well, for me it’s Ashton Kutcher. Ever since I was a young boy growing up in Ireland, I would watch That 70s Show and marvel. Ever since then I’ve always been a little behind him and he has guided me like a Pole Star of acting. Dude Where’s My Car, The Butterfly Effect, My Boss’s Daughter, every film he did, I would be sitting at the front of the cinema with a notepad and a biro jotting everything down furiously. So when I got the opportunity to play Jobs, I obviously wondered if I could handle it. But I remembered that Hunter S. Thompson had typed The Great Gatsby out in its entirety so as to channel his hero. I figured I’d do the same with Ashton.

Amazing!

I know. And the next thing is though, I’m addicted. I’m not sure I got it all right and I want to do it again.

Another Steve Jobs film?

No. Obviously no. I want to remake another Kutcher movie. I’m thinking Personal Effects or Just Married. It’s only a pity that Two and a Half Men has finished or I could have appeared in that as a recurring character. Maybe Ashton’s long lost twin brother or something.

What Happens in Vegas will be released in 2016.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER LOOKS NOTHING LIKE STEVE JOBS

HOLLYWOOD – In a stunning trailer to the new Danny Boyle film, Steve Jobs we saw an unrecognizable Michael Fassbender, in the sense that he didn’t look anything like Steve Jobs.

The new Danny Boyle film is from a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, which is itself based on the bestselling Walter Isaacson biography. Fassbender wears Jobs clothes but has obviously decided to dispense with any attempt at uncanny resemblance. Seth Rogen has a beard but other than that he follows his co-star in looking nothing like Steve Wozniak.

Has to be said, this might be a good thing. Acting is not and never should be impersonation. For an example of the opposite going entirely wrong watch Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit for Hitchcock. The prosthetics were so exaggerated and distracting that I almost missed how ridiculous Hopkins’ accent was and how banal the script.

Michael Fassbender is appearing in a number of films this year, including Slow West and a new version of Macbeth, and he looks nothing like Macbeth.

For more FACTS about Michael Fassbender CLICK HERE.

Image courtesy of @ThePixelFactor.

Steve Jobs will be released in October, 2015.

 

THE QUEEN TO PLAY HELEN MIRREN IN BIOPIC

LONDON – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is to make her acting début starring as actress Helen Mirren in a new biopic of the actress’s life called Mirren.

Buckingham Palace released a press release earlier today that included a personal statement from the Queen herself. 

One reaches a moment in one’s live when one realizes that some things have passed one by and through no one’s fault but one’s own, one has got into something of a rut. Last summer one had the opportunity to appear in a short film directed by Mr. Danny Boyle and co-starring the scrumptious Daniel Craig as part of the Olympics opening ceremony. One was pleased to do one’s bit but then one realized that one had been bitten by the acting bug and so when Mr. Stephen Frears telephoned and asked one if one would appear as Dame Helen Mirren one leapt at the chance. Dame Helen has played one both on-stage and screen, most successfully in a film called The Queen. So it feels fitting that one’s début should be to return the favor.     

Dame Helen Mirren was unavailable for comment but friends close to the actress says that she was highly annoyed by the development, believing it to be disrespectful to her high status to be portrayed in a film.

Mirren will be released in 2016.  

CHARLES DICKENS’ SCREEN-WRITING RULEBOOK

LONDON – It was the best of films; it was the worst of films – that was my opinion of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, but for why? For why? In a word, or if you’ll allow myself, Charles Dickens, a tired old Victorian novelist, an excess of the prescribed proverbial minimum, then in several words: the Ruddy Screenplay Messrs Boyle and Garland!

The late introduction of a preposterous villain, the insupportable shift of tone, the grinding abandonment of interesting premises and believable characters all showed a lack of rigour in the art of composition and so to avoid such future crimes to the eyes I have endeavoured with my small fund of knowledge to communicate to future generations these golden immutable rules of storytelling for the edification of the moving pictogram business.

  1. Names: names are all important and yet the execrable Jack Reacher, John McClaine even James Bond are all bland beyond the credence of even the most supine of spectators. Imagine if Jack Reacher had been entitled Jacob Recksnifflewick; how much more exciting would the Die Hard series (execrable title but I digress) have been had Bruce Willis played New York police officer Jonathan Piggleturd or imagine in the private magic lantern of your brain how the world of divertimento would be enlivened if 007 muttered ‘the name’s Bond, Jazandapus Bond.’ If anyone proffers the argument that these names are not realistic I would ask them to explain their point in person to my best friend Augustus Egg.
  2. The Three Act structure:  There has been so much hogwash, piffle-cakes and poppycock written about this concept that it makes one tug at one’s fore whiskers until they smart. So let us be clear. It is not a THREE act structure but a Thirty Seven Chapter structure that works so well. Read Bleak House, read Great Expectations, read The Pickwick Papers and you will see this rule in perfect action.
  3. Humor: Yes, I’m looking at you Herr. Haneke. Humor is an important ingredient in writing popular entertainment of any kind, be it light theatre, newspaper sketches or long, long novels. Be sure and put in plenty of jokes. Wake the blighters up with some blarney about a missing pound note or a drunken ombudsman.
  4. Kill a child: We’re all a sentimental lot and love a good cry. Nothing works so well as a beautiful innocent child dying of some undefined disease which starts off as the merest of coughs. You’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand. Breathlessly asking after Little Nell as if she were a real person and not the invention of genius.

Well, I hope I have been of some modest assistance. If you have more need of me feel free to address your enquiries to the comments box below.

FIRST LOOK AT MICHAEL FASSBENDER AS STEVE JOBS

HOLLYWOOD – Many were bemused by the casting of Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs in the new Danny Boyle directed biopic of the Apple ‘genius’, but doubters are eating their words.

The Studio Exec can reveal the first look at Michael Fassbender as Jobs in the classic pose that also graced the cover of the Walter Isaacson biography that was published shortly following Steve Jobs’ death.

Resident Jobs expert Xavier Poulis had this to say:

It’s uncanny. I mean Michael Fassbender doesn’t normally look anything like Steve Jobs, but here in this first picture he is almost like a creepy doppelganger, perfectly mimicking not only the IT genius’ pose but his eyes, his ears, his nose, his hair line and his turtle neck sweater. Move over Daniel Day Lewis, sit down Christian Bale, shut up Robert De Niro: there’s a new actor capable of extreme physical transformation on the block and his name is Michael Fassbender.

Author Isaacson was flabbergasted at the transformation of the Irish/German actor into the whiz kid of tech valley. A close friend of the writer said:

It almost looks as if you’ve just taken a picture of Steve Jobs and you’re just saying it’s Michael Fassbender, when actually it’s still a picture of Steve Jobs. Utterly amazing! What an actor!

Scripted by Aaron Sorkin and produced by Scott Rudin, the production went through a lengthy development process with many actors vying for the lead role, even as criticism was heaped on the film for even daring to challenge Ashton Kutcher’s magisterial performance in the made for TV movie Jobs.

Steve Jobs will be released in 2016.

 

NATALIE PORTMAN IS STEVE JOBS

HOLLYWOOD – Sony emails reveal that beating out tough competition from male stars such as Michael Fassbender and Christian Bale, Natalie Portman has seized the prize and been cast as Steve Jobs in the new Universal film, Steve Jobs.

Based on Walter Isaacson’s top selling biography, the much anticipated film has been scripted by Aaron Sorkin, but has had some problems deciding on a lead. Christian Bale was initially tipped to play the part, but backed out leaving Sony in the lurch. The film project moved to Universal and Michael Fassbender was wide tipped to be in the front running for the part of the black turtle-necked one, but rumors were also rife that Samuel L. Jackson was interested in the role, giving us the first black Steve Jobs. Jackson told the Studio Exec that as Jobs’ father was Syrian it makes as much sense for him to play him as for a white actor. However, now all such arguments are moot as Natalie Portman has confirmed her commitment to playing the lead.

She told SE:

I admire Steve and I admire all he stands for. I am very proud to be getting the opportunity to turn that admiration into a performance that will go some way to cementing his reputation in the culture of today.

How have you prepared for the role?

I’ve been using my iPhone a lot, I can tell you!

Ha ha! But yeah, how are you going to prepare?

No that’s it.

What about critics who say you’re too female to play Jobs?

I think that’s very small-minded. I’m absolutely positive would be very supportive of the film if he knew about it. And I am told that he was a big fan of Leon and The Phantom Menace. I think I read somewhere that he thought the Phantom Menace was the best Star Wars film. I might have just made that up, so don’t print it.

The film’s director Danny Boyle said that he was a great admirer of Jobs but that the film would not be a hagiography.

Steve would not have wanted us to paint him as a saint. He was too intelligent not to understand his own limitations. That was part of his genius. So yes. We’re going to have the scene where he tells the Chinese to get tough on their workers and lower the production costs of the iPod.

Steve Jobs will be released in 2016.

STEVE COOGAN TO PLAY MORRISSEY

MANCHESTER – Actor, comedian and writer Steve Coogan is to play Morrissey the lead singer of legendary group The Smiths in the film version of Morrissey’s best-selling autobiography.

The Trip and Philomena star told Studio Exec EXCLUSIVELY:

This for me is a real labour of love. We have a great script by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Danny Boyle, another Manc, is going to be directing. We are all huge fans. When we had the first meetings we just sat around talking about our favourite songs. Mine is The Boy with a Thorn in his Side, Frank loves Girlfriend in a Coma and Danny rather predictably likes How Soon is Now? I met Morrissey about five years ago and I was absolutely starstruck. I was speechless. Which was a first for me.  Ha ha. Because I talk so much usually.

With filming set to begin in December, what does Morrissey himself think of the film?

We had a few meetings with him, because of course we are adapting his book and so we wanted his input and he told us at the first meeting that he was happy about the film.

Happy?

His exact words were ‘I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour.’

Great.

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now will be released in 2015.