10. I WANT MY MUMMY: Miramax has picked up the domestic rights to Highlander director Russell Mulcahy’s horror film, Talos the Mummy. The story takes place in modern-day London. Talos is unleashed, and they have to dig up and reanimate the only detective who can stop him. There’s also still talk about doing Anne Rice’s version of a mummy saga, so look for a comeback in the wrapped look. And look for a comeback on Talos from genre icons Christopher Lee and Honor Blackman. It’s like the real Austin Powers.
9. NOT DOWNEY FOR LONG: Robert Downey Jr. is back at work, just having joined the cast of Bofinger’s Big Thing, the Eddie Murphy/Steve Martin/Heather Graham comedy. After making his first real public appearance a few weeks ago at the MTV Movie Awards, Downey turned up at the premiere of The X-Files with Minnie Driver in hand. Neither stopped to talk to the press, but Minnie has added a new face to the long list of doomed beaus in her young life.
8. RETURN OF THE PSYCHO: No, not Psycho. American Psycho. Leo may well be back on board after Oliver Stone has gotten involved and may direct the picture. Of course, if that happens, you can double the budget again to $80 million. Leo is also considering $22 million to do a remake of A Farewell to Arms. Of course, American Psycho, which involves a rather gross serial killer, should be sub-titled A Farewell To Arms. Just think, two-films-in-one, and Leo takes home $43 million.
7. GODZILLA DAMN!: You thought he was dead, but Godzilla is piling up retail receipts, even after early reports looked bleak for the licensees for Godzilla products. Sony now estimates retail sales to exceed $500 million, perhaps hitting as much as $750 million. That’ll pay for a lot of Taco Bell.
6. THE YEARN TO BURN: The Fifth Element director Luc Besson is planning to make a new version of the Joan of Arc story. He’s going to burn his lady love Milla Jovovich. (After all, she’ll be 23 this year. Ancient.) But Kathryn Bigelow is out to stop him. Yes, more legal wrangling! Bigelow, director of such classic flops as Point Break and Strange Days, says Besson sabotaged her project while it was in pre-production in 1996. Look for Luc to tie Bigelow to the stake before long.
5. HOME ICEBERG: Titanic is coming home on September 1, just in time to put some life into your Labor Day barbecue. Paramount expects the film to break all live-action video records before being re-released with 20 minutes of unseen footage probably sometime around Thanksgiving. You’ll be able to see for yourself the version with Schwarzenegger destroying the iceberg and saving the ship. And the missing scene with Linda Hamilton duking it out with Suzy Amis. And the clam chowder hallucinogens segment. Cool!
4. SO SUE ME: Lawsuits come and go. As Francis Ford Coppola was spending his days on the witness stand in his trial against Warner Bros. over his never-made Pinnochio, U.S. District Judge Gary Taylor threw out a $100 million lawsuit over The Full Monty. The judge basically said, “Get this case out of the U.S.” If he could only get the lawyers to go with the case.
3. PREMIERE-ALLY UNFAIR: New Line has pulled all its ads and stopped cooperating with Premiere magazine as a result of an article called “Flirting With Disaster,” which focuses primarily on supposed sexual and drug-related faux pas by studio executives. Is there something wrong with the New Line culture? I can’t say for sure. I can tell you only this. The sources in the article were almost all anonymous. And the current and former executives that I know from New Line all talk about one thing: how New Line’s top execs are actually in the business of making movies and not passing the buck like most of the other studios in town. Without prodding, executives from other studios are routinely described by the same people as more interested in sex than in business, but not New Line. Does that mean there haven’t been drugs taken and harassing passes made? No, but the same story could be done about almost every studio and major production company in town other than, perhaps, Disney and Sony. And both of those studios have skeletons of their own.
2. I’LL BE BACK, EVENTUALLY: As predicted here at The Hot Button, the amazing success of Titanic is going to cost the world at least one Jim Cameron movie. Cameron has now gone public with his plans to wait at least another year before jumping back into the directing saddle. Had Titanic flopped, Cameron would have been compelled to make things right and would probably be shooting a film for next summer right now. Oh, well. The long wait for Spiderman or Planet of the Apes or Forbidden Planet or Avitar or that Mary Poppins remake he dreams of doing or T4 has officially begun.
1. EQUAL WRONGS: The Screen Actors Guild membership earned about $1.4 billion in 1998. Women earned $472.7 million of the take. I don’t really believe there’s institutionalized sexism in the business of hiring actors, but women’s work is almost never done.
READER OF THE DAY: Andy writes about David Denby‘s bitter attack on The Truman Show: “That seemed like an overly bitter review of The Truman Show to me. ‘Didn’t have any emotional resonance?’ It sure did to me. Maybe because Denby has a cushy critic’s job so that he doesn’t have to feel trapped by life’s choices. For all the talk about how this film is satirizing the media, it resonates most for me as a man trying to escape the trap that a routine, predictable life has made (or been made for him). I thought Carrey, while not Oscar-worthy as some have claimed, did a very good job. And regardless of what Denby said, this film kept me interested throughout.”

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