Twilight: Breaking Dawn Director Bill Condon Eyed For Beauty And The Beast

Beauty And The Beast has enchanted audiences worldwide, and it feels like every year there's a new, thinly-veiled stab at it. It's a flexible story, of course: guy is a monster, girl is lovely, she sees through his grossness, he accepts her fabulousness. Disney is here to brush away the CW's Beauty And The Beast and stuff like Beastly, however, to reclaim the throne. The Beast is comin' back, y'all. 

Film Divider's Twitter account recently revealed that Disney, attempting to relaunch their animated works into live action, has found a director!

Condon is best-known as the architect for the final two fairly insane Twilight movies. Condon's a Hollywood lifer at this point, having helmed musicals like Dreamgirls, biopics like Gods And Monsters and unassailable classics like Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh. Who could have guessed Condon would start as a writer on Sister, Sister and eventually move towards William Sadler jerking off and finishing within ten seconds in Kinsey? The movies are truly magic. 

This is believed to be the version Disney was developing last year, when they hired Joe Aherne (Trance) to adapt the material. It's odd that Disney would so aggressively move away from traditional animation while also adapting previous works into live action: this follows Maleficent, Cinderella and The Jungle Book as new visions of animated classics. Are they trying to capture the demographic who grew up on these films but have aged and can no longer justify buying tickets for animated movies? 

Note that this has nothing to do with Guillermo Del Toro's planned version of the story that had Emma Watson attached. The story is so well-known that even the French have tried it: Lea Seydoux and Vincent Cassell were the latest B&B duo to try it out. It's a tale as old as time, a song as old a- you get the picture. No word on who would star in this, but Disney's nothing if not aggressive in regards to these projects, so expect some movement soon. Below, you can catch the trailer to the Disney version as well as the recent French version, which looks absolutely gorgeous. The trailer's in French with no subtitles, because we like to keep it classy. 

Source: cinema blend

Bethany Lopez handles a sensitive subject beautifully in "8 Weeks"!

I loved this novel. It deals sensitively with the subject of infidelity. What happens, when a loving husband goes away with his friends for a guys weekend and wakes up, with no memory of what happened and a naked woman in his room.

He comes clean, but his wife is obviously not too forgiving.

This is the story of their journey through this difficult time. I have to admit, that I wasn't that into the subject matter of this book, but I loved all of the other work by Bethany that I read, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I was not disappointed.

I fell in love with these characters and I look forward to reading her next work. Do yourself the favour and read this book.

Purchase links:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Hottie of the Week!

This is another short week since it’s a subject I don’t know much about: the NHL Playoffs. By request, I was asked to put together some hotties of the NHL.  So...here ya go!

Andrew Ference (credit: Heath Robbins, National Geographic)

Zach Parise (credit: startribune.com)

Kris Letang (credit: zimbio.com)

Jacob Markstrom (credit: hockeyplayerswithpets via tumblr)

Ethan Moreau and Sheldon Souray (via @SexyNHLPlayers on Twitter)

Ryan Kesler (photo credit: Sports Illustrated)

Lionsgate To Split Final ‘Divergent’ Sequel ‘Allegiant’ Into Two Films To Cap Hit Sci-Fi Franchise

Lionsgate/Summit will adapt Veronica Roth‘s Divergent novel trilogy into a total of not three, but four films starring Shailene Woodley as the dystopian sci-fi heroine Beatrice “Tris” Prior, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Co-Chairmen Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger revealed today. Following last month’s blockbuster hit Divergent and its planned 2015 sequel Insurgent, Allegiant – adapted from the third book in Roth’s bestselling YA book series – will be split into two separate films to conclude the franchise. Lionsgate had previously set Allegiant for a March 18, 2016 release. Allegiant Part 1 will keep that date, with Part 2 to follow on March 24, 2017. Both films will be produced separately.

Divergent has quickly made a box office star of Woodley, who will reprise her role in all three sequels as Tris, the 16-year-old girl who finds herself a target as one of few in her futuristic society who defy categorization into one of five personality-based factions. The first picture scored a $54.6M opening in March and has now racked up $117M domestic and $139M worldwide in three weeks of release. It’s still rolling out strong internationally and opens this weekend in France, Germany, Russia, Australia, Scandinavia, and other territories. Meanwhile sales of Roth’s novels have also enjoyed a bump from the film’s release, with boxed set and multi-book e-bundles jumping up 55 percent in sales last week and nearly 20 million copies sold worldwide.

Splitting Roth’s final novel into two films isn’t a left field move for Lionsgate. Similar thinking first paid off for the company in a big way with Twilight Saga-ender Breaking Dawn. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II took in $829M in worldwide grosses alone and extended Summit’s vampire romance franchise into five films from author Stephenie Meyer’s original four novels. Likewise, the upcoming Hunger Games finale Mockingjay will be released in two parts on November 21, 2014 and November 20, 2015, respectively, squeezing an extra installment out of the final book in novelist Suzanne Collins’ YA series. Together the two film franchises have already grossed over $5 billion worldwide for Lionsgate/Summit, with last year’s Hunger Games: Catching Fire becoming the 10th highest grossing film of all time.

“Veronica Roth brings her captivating story to a masterful conclusion in Allegiant, a rich, action-packed book with material that is ideally suited to two strong and fulfilling movies,” said Friedman and Wachsberger. “The storytelling arc and world of the characters lend themselves perfectly to two films, a storytelling strategy that has worked very well for us on the two Twilight Breaking Dawn films and about which we’re tremendously enthusiastic for the two upcoming Mockingjay films of The Hunger Games franchise.”

The question is, where will Lionsgate split Allegiant‘s story? Conspiracies within the world of Divergent unfold further in sequel Insurgent, which begins filming next month under helmer Robert Schwentke, directing from an Akiva Goldsman rewrite of Brian Duffield’s draft. He got the gig when Lionsgate fast-tracked the sequel for a March 20, 2015 date while helmer Neil Burger was still in post-production on the first pic. Third book Allegiant is told from the perspectives of both Tris and fellow initiate Four, played in Divergent‘s film adaptation by Theo James, as the characters enter a dangerous new world they no longer recognize and new truths are revealed about the past and future.

Source: deadline

Theo Thursday

Another week, another Thursday and oh so much Theo James to share with everyone. That look, his jawline and OH MY GOD, those lips! PERFECTION at its finest!!!