The 'Pitch Perfect' Gang Is Doing a Christmas Album
Today in show business news: Get ready for an a cappella Christmas from the cast of Pitch Perfect, Darren Aronofsky wants to tell a spy story, and Nicholas Sparks teams up with Lifetime.
.Today in show business news: Get ready for an a cappella Christmas from the cast of Pitch Perfect, Darren Aronofsky wants to tell a spy story, and Nicholas Sparks teams up with Lifetime.
Last fall's college a cappella comedy Pitch Perfect was such a success — mostly in that it finally allowed Anna Kendrick to follow her true passion, playing cups — that the cast of silly singing misfits has decided to reconvene and, well yes make a sequel, but also record a Christmas album. And I'm sure it was all their decision, one made out of the goodness of their hearts. They're probably not even being paid. The album will probably be entirely a cappella, which is good because if it wasn't what would be the point, to sound like goddang Glee? No. A cappella is the way to go. And hey, it can't be worse than N' Sync's Christmas album. (Don't tell my sister I said that.) [Vulture]
Darren Aronofsky might be directing a spy movie next. He's in talks to adapt a novel called Red Sparrow, which Deadline describes in length. Want it? Here it is:
The book is set in contemporary Russia, and state intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the agency’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers collide in a charged atmosphere of trade craft, deception, and inevitably, a sexual attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America’s valuable mole in Moscow. Dominika winds up seeking revenge against her soulless masters, and living a fatal double life after she is recruited by the CIA to ferret out a high-level traitor in Washington. She also hunts down a Russian illegal buried deep in the U.S. military and, against all odds, to return to Moscow as the new-generation penetration of Vladimir Putin’s intelligence service.
Which, OK, sounds exciting enough, but why is it always that the lady spy has to sleep with a guy or be put in some other sort of sexual danger in these kinds of things? (Think: Hunted.) It's sorta tirrrred, isn't it? Just a little? Oh well. I'm sure it'll be interesting. He makes interesting movies. Right? [Deadline]
Half of this The Hollywood Reporter headline is: "Vin Diesel Teams with 'Grace of Monaco'." And that's all we need. We don't need the rest, do we? I like this just fine. Vin Diesel and Grace of Monaco, or the quotes would suggest that it's someone pretending to be Grace of Monaco, are teaming up and that's all. We do not care that he's teaming with the Grace of Monaco writer for some fool movie. Nope. Vin Diesel and Grace of Monaco, or an imposter pretending to be Grace of Monaco, are finally together and that's that. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Lifetime: Television for Darkened Living Rooms Where the Only Person Home Has Passed Out on the Couch with a Bottle of Wine in Their Hand has greenlit a backdoor pilot from schlockmeister Nicholas Sparks that's a romance set during the Civil War. Oh that'll be great. Lifetime and Nicholas Sparks teaming up to tell a story about the Civil War, a two-hour movie that could become a series? That ought to be great. Terrific. Full steam ahead, Lifetime! (Also, the first sentence from Vulture is: "Lifetime has green-lit a backdoor pilot from tear-jerking romance overlord Nicholas Sparks, the network announced." Which if you shortened, quote-style, could say "backdoor...jerking...romance overlord Nicholas Sparks." Just saying.) [Vulture]