By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY ACQUIRES “APOLLO 18” AT AFM

Posted Sunday, November 7th, 2010 - Comments Off on THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY ACQUIRES “APOLLO 18” AT AFM
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Santa Monica, CA (November 7, 2010) – The Weinstein Company has acquired “Apollo 18,” the sci-fi thriller based on the screenplay by Brian Miller, winner of the inaugural Astana International Action Film Festival screenplay competition, founded by “Wanted” director Timur Bekmambetov.  Trevor Cawood is set to direct the project. Bekmambetov and Michele Wolkoff, President of Development for Bekmambetov Projects Ltd. (BPL) will produce the film. Set to be shot documentary style, the film unearths lost footage from Apollo 18’s undocumented and covert mission to the moon, revealing disturbing new evidence of other life forms.

Bekmambetov announced the contest this spring, in conjunction with Kazakhstan’s first film festival held in Astana, Kazakhstan July 27-July 1, 2010.  Five finalists from the United States, France, Kazakhstan, and the UK attended the film festival, which was a celebration of international action films.  As part of the competition, Miller was awarded a cash prize and a development deal with BPL.

The film is slated to begin production this December for a March release date.

About The Weinstein Company

The Weinstein Company (TWC) was created by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the brothers who founded Miramax Films Corporation in 1979.  TWC is a multimedia company that officially launched on October 1, 2005.  Dimension Films, the genre label that was founded in 1993 by Bob Weinstein, is also included under the TWC banner.  During the Weinsteins’ tenure at Miramax Films, the company released some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful independent feature films which received 63 Oscar wins and 274 Academy Award nominations  and have generated billions of dollars in worldwide box office receipts and billions more in home video sales.   In its history, Dimension Films has released some of the most successful franchises including Scream, Spy Kids and Scary Movie.

Forthcoming releases include Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter, Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, John Wells’ (“ER,” “The West Wing”) feature directorial debut Company Men starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, Rosemary DeWitt, Maria Bello and Chris Cooper, as well as the highly anticipated new installments of Spy Kids 4 and Scream 4, to be released in 2011.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon