* The District 5 Tributes have been cast in Gary Ross's adaptation of The Hunger Games
. Chris Mark will play the male Tribute, another one without a name. Jacqueline Emerson will play the female Tribute, nicknamed "Foxface" by Katniss Everdeen. Foxface is actually one of the stronger competitors in the Games.* With Martin Luther King biopics hitting a roadblock mostly due to the lack of support from the King estate, Warner Brothers and Dreamworks have decided to pool their resources and make a joint stab at it. Dreamworks already owns the intellectual rights to the civil rights leader's story and the cooperation of the estate, while Warner Brothers has a long gestating script by Kario Salem(The Score
). Now that the project is underway, Salem will be crafting a whole new script, but there's no word on who will direct. Maybe Lee Daniels(Precious
), who had his own MLK film hit the skids, will get another shot?* Steven Soderbergh is still hanging up his camera for good in a year or so, but before that he's still got a lot of work ahead of him. Haywire hits theaters in a few months, with Contagion coming out in October. Next year he's got The Man from UNCLE, and let's not forget his Liberace biopic. But before that he's taking on a surprise flick, an autobiographical tale of Channing Tatum's early life as an exotic dancer. No kidding. According to Deadline, the film will be titled Magic Mike, and will be about the title character's mentoring of a younger dancer in how to shake his groove thang, I guess. Plans are for the film to shoot around September or October.
