Do you guys even like hearing rumors straight out of Deadline Daytona Beach? Be honest. Is there value in them for you as movie fans? Do you feel like reporting chatter is just like being back in Film Blogging High School (where all of Rejects attended, and were subsequently kicked out). Tell me. In any case, it’s a slow pre-Oscars Friday, and it looks like all we have to report are rampant rumors. So here they are.
Deadline Detroit reports that MGM “is making an offer” to rising star Joel Kinnaman for the titular role in the new Robocop. That’s right, the news isn’t that MGM has made an offer, it’s that they will. I’m getting to old for this game. But while rumors and gossip and chatter are, by and large, not very exciting, this news is – mainly because the possibility of a fresh face in an old property is actually interesting.
You might recognize Kinnaman from a number of stand-out roles – the Swedish actor first came to American attention on the television series The Killing, and he’s also had roles in big budget flicks like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Darkest Hour, along with a memorable supporting role in Safe House. But cinephiles likely know him from his other collaboration with Safe House director, Daniel Espinosa, as Kinnaman starred in Espinosa’s Snabba Cash films (known here in the States as Easy Money). If Kinnaman is offered the role (and if he takes it), he’ll be directed by Jose Padilha (director of the Elite Squad films) from up-and-coming scribe Josh Zetumer (who memorably penned that Bourne Identity 4 script that never got used after Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon left the franchise). What’s that? Is that the possibility of an exciting new remake? Yes, yes it is.
In still more hot, fresh rumor action from Deadline Henderson, the outlet also reports that actors are “lining up” for the villain role in Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (the Cormac McCarthy-penned film that will star Michael Fassbender as a lawyer who gets pulled into the drug underworld). Some of those possible actors? Jeremy Renner, Javier Bardem, and apparent long-shot Brad Pitt. Those guys certainly sound like villains to me.