Norton’s ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ to close New York Film Fest

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Blanchett eyes Del Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley’

A Warner Bros. Pictures releases a scenefrom drama “MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN,” of Edward Norton.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 3, (RTRS): Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn” has nabbed the closing night slot at this year’s New York Film Festival. The adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s best-selling novel is a fitting choice to cap the fall festival given its setting. It unfolds in 1950s New York and follows a private detective (Norton) with Tourette syndrome as he becomes entangled in a conspiracy involving a Robert Moses-like master builder (Alec Baldwin). Norton changed the book’s time frame – the novel takes place in the present day. In addition to Norton and Baldwin, the cast includes Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Leslie Mann, and Cherry Jones. The film will screen at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, Oct 11, 2019 and will be released by Warner Bros Pictures later this year. Norton wrote and directed the film along with starring in the picture.

 “To have this particular film – which grew out of my love affair with New York – selected for closing night is just a huge thrill… a dream come true, actually,” Norton said in a statement.

 “Motherless Brooklyn” is one of several awards hopefuls that Warner Bros will field this year. The studio is also planning to push its adaptation of Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”, the Michael Jordan drama “Just Mercy”, and even “The Joker”, its gritty comic book film, into Oscar contention.

 “Edward Norton has taken Jonathan Lethem’s novel as a jumping-off point to craft a wildly imaginative and extravagant love letter to New York, a beautifully told semi-musical hard-boiled yarn grounded in the mid-20th century history of the city,” said New York Film Festival director and Selection Committee chair Kent Jones in a statement. “What a way to close the festival!”

 Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the 17-day New York Film Festival will open with Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman”. Earlier this week, it announced that its centerpiece selection will be Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story”.

Also:

LOS ANGELES: Cate Blanchett is in talks to star opposite Bradley Cooper in Guillermo del Toro and Fox Searchlight’s adaptation of “Nightmare Alley”.

The production is eyeing a shooting start at the top of 2020.

Del Toro will direct the pic and co-wrote the script with Kim Morgan. “Nightmare Alley” is being produced and financed by del Toro and J. Miles Dale with TSG Entertainment, with Fox Searchlight acquiring worldwide distribution rights to the film.

While Fox made a “Nightmare Alley” movie in 1947, this film will be based moreso on the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The 1947 movie starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is. At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.

After “The Shape of Water” went on to win several Oscars, including best picture and director for del Toro, the auteur decided to hold off on picking his next directing gig, only focusing his efforts as a producer on the Searchlight movie “Antlers” and the soon-to-be-released “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”.

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LOS ANGELES: Phil Lord and Chris Miller have signed a first-look deal with Universal Pictures.

The pair recently won the best animated movie Oscar for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, which they produced. Additionally, the series originated by the duo, including “21 Jump Street”, “The LEGO Movie” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”, have grossed more than $3.3 billion at the global box office.

This marks the first overall feature deal for the team, which has purposefully remained independent producers on the film side. With the expansion of their Lord Miller production banner, including the addition of Aditya Sood as president of film and an expansive five-year overall television deal with Sony Pictures Television, a first-look deal on the features side was a logical next step.

“Universal has a history of breaking new ground and championing unexpected voices, so for us it’s a very welcoming environment to make bold, original films that push the medium forward,” said Lord and Miller in a statement. “We also feel a deep obligation to leave something behind for future generations of studio executives to reboot. We’re very grateful to Donna, Peter and the entire Universal team for inviting us to partner with them in reaching that goal.”

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