Filming began on Monday on the sequel to Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them. The as-yet untitled film is the second of five set in J.K.Rowling’s “ wizarding world.” David Yates directs with Eddie Redmayne returning as magizoologist Newt Scamander, Johnny Depp as the powerful dark wizard Gerret Grindewald and Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore long before he became Headmaster at Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The film,set in 1927, moves the action from New York to London and on to Paris as Scamander and Dumbledore aid in the search for Grindewald. The first film in the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise was a huge success with a worldwide gross of $814 million.
Alec Baldwin, Sienna Miller and Charles Grodin have completed the drama The Private Life Of A Modern Woman for veteran writer/director JamesToback. The movie, which was made “in secret” is at the editing stage and should be released before Christmas. Baldwin and Toback made a documentary a few years ago called Seduced And Abandoned in which both filmmakers travelled to the Cannes Film Festival to try to raise the money for a feature film. Presumably this is the result. Baldwin has recently completed Mission Impossible 6, the comedy Drunk Parents and Lamborghini in which he plays motor mogul Enzo Ferrari.
Downton Abbey, a film version of the popular period soap opera, is set to begin shooting in September two years after the ITV series ended. Months after the rumours of a movie began to circulate the production company, Carnival Films and writer Julian Fellowes have confirmed that they have a start date. Actor Jeremy Swift, who played the butler Septimus Spratt, revealed this week that the film had been held up by the schedules of the main cast. Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Brendan Coyle, Jim Carter and Joanne Froggatt are all expected to return for the movie but the availability of the likes of Lily James who has a thriving film career is not certain.
We’ve had several inquiries about Andy Serkis’ live action version of The Jungle Book. The film was originally intended for release in October 2016 but it was put back so as not to clash with the Disney adaptation of the
film. Now it is intended that it will open wide on 19th October 2018. The film will be a “ motion capture” festival with up to nine stars including Benedict Cumberbatch, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Harris and Tom Hollander- using the digital system…..Andy Serkis directs The Jungle Book as well as playing Baloo….Meanwhile Serkis’ will make his directorial debut with the biopic Breath, starring Andrew Garfield, at this year’s London Film Festival in November.
The BBC Studios has announced plans for new TV adaptations of Ken Follett’s 2001 novel Jackdaws and Frederick Forsyth’s 2013 espionage thriller The Kill List. Writer/director Mick Ford has completed the first episode of Jackdaws which follows a team of female insurgents in Occupied France during WWII. It was originally intended to make Jackdaws a 4 part mini series but now it has been re-developed into a bigger budget, on going series with a first season of eight episodes. The Kill List focuses on a former British soldier called Tracker on a mission to find and kill a
prolific terrorist called The Preacher.
