Wanna Be in Sandy’s Squad?

Her brand may be crisis this weekend, but Sandra Bullock is looking forward to a sure hit in the future.

The Oscar winner is rebooting George Clooney’s Ocean’s Eleven!

And just like Hollywood is doing with Ghostbusters, the project will feature an all-female cast. Fret not, the new incarnation will not be losing that good ol’ star quality we have come to love: Clooney and his franchise’s director, Steven Soderbergh, are both on board as producers.

The new Bullock-led Ocean’s Eleven movie will be helmed by The Hunger Games’ Gary Ross.

OMG I see roles for Sharon Stone and Gina Gershon and Catherine Deneuve and Lucy Liu and Taraji P. Henson....

Photo: HollywoodReporter.com.

The Realized Ad Man

It’s going from the grind of Mississippi to the advertising pitch room for Ryan Reynolds.

Gotta On Demand that, note to self.

;)

Anyway. R2 is circling the Truth in Advertising, which, see, is exactly the title of a new movie from Notting Hill’s Roger Michell.

The movie – based on an acclaimed novel by a John Kenney – will have R2 portraying an executive upstart whose boss asks him to cancel his Christmas plans in order to work on a campaign. Which, of course, suddenly makes him question everything.

Photo: LATimes.com.

Valeriana

Princess RiRi is ready for her next close-up.

She must be watching Lady GaGa hoteling around these days....

Rihanna is set appear in a new movie following her turn in the turdstastic Battleship now that she has been cast in Luc Besson’s Valerian, which will star Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne and Clive Owen.

No clue as to what sort of role the singer will play, but Besson has revealed that her part in the futuristic offering will be substantial, OKRRR.

Photo: DailyCupofBlaBlaBla.com.

Le Halle Divorce

First her TV shows, Extant on CBS (not anymore!), goes, then her marriage goes.

Super-bitchy thing to say: Who else ain’t like, surprised that Halle Berry is getting a new divorce?

From Olivier Martinez, her third husband (good for her).

Who had two years in the book?!

All kidding aside, for real (she makes it so easy, though), the couple called it quits yesterday. Officially, After some five years together (the Oscar winner and the French actor were married in July 2013; they have a 2-year-old son together, and she has a daughter with model Gabriel Aubry).

Whathowwhen? When she Oscar winner filed for divorce (and then he filed, too).

Oh yeah. This is already not looking a happy ending. And kinda weird.

Evidently, Berry filed under a totally normal alias.... And then under her real name.

Photo: MyTalk1071.com.

He Can and Wants to Be Your Hero, Yo

I have long maintained that Marvel needs to cast Derek Theler in one of its movies double-pronto.

Dem abs are not gonna stay that hard forever, you know.

The actor is game for it – and he is not being shy about it. Like me!

Check out what he told Attitude magazine recently: Landing a superhero role is the reason he even went to Hollywood in the first place.

Lets make it happen, already. Stop clamoring for reboots, people, and start asking for hot guys to score the roles of their dreams. We all win in that scenario.

Photo: Attitude.co.uk.

Busy Hoult

Equals star Nicholas Hoult is pretty much about to become the guy.

Last seen in Mad Max: Fury Road (and, maybe, in Dark Places, although that is quite less likely), the British actor is sticking close to the sci-fi genre for a bit in order to star opposite Rooney Mara in The Discovery, a new romance set a year after the existence of the afterlife is scientifically verified.

Hoult will portray the son of the scientist who makes the discovery, while the Pan actress will play a woman with a tragic past with whom he falls in love.

The news comes right on the heels of his attachment to A Life In the Day, the story of Brian Epstein, the erstwhile Beatles manager. Hoult reportedly is fixing to take on the role of the flamboyantly gay Epstein, while Unbroken’s Jack O’Connell would portray John Lennon, with whom Epstein is said to have had quite the intense relationship.

Called it: It Boy Alert!

Photo: Pinterest.com.

Ricky’s Baaack!

You have been warned, Hollywood.

Three-time Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais is headed back to the Beverly Hilton this winter to host the awards show for a fourth time.

Gervais hosted from 2010 to 2012, and was replaced – for three years! – by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who last hosted the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s shindig earlier this year.

“I’m making a list. I’m checking it twice,” the comedian tweeted out earlier today when the news was revealed.

The 2016 Golden Globes are set to air live on NBC on Jan. 10.

Photo: EW.com.

Hello, Saturday Night!

’Tis the season of and for Adele.

The singer, who is back with a new single before a new album, is set to say “Hello” and more to TV’s Saturday Night Live on Nov. 21.

:)!

Alas, gf is not also hosting the show, for that is what Matthew McConaughey will be doing.

Poor thing. No one is gonna care about him that night.

Photo: FastCompany.com.

Coping

Looming divorce is working out for Gwen Stefani, at least when it comes to her music.

The singer has gone and written a new song titled “Used to Love You,” which one need not be a genius to surmise it is all about her recent split from Gavin Rossdale.

Urgh, that’s still such a bummer.

Hey, at least the exes are planning on 50/50 custody of their three boys, so there’s that....

Photo: Billboard.com.

The Swedish Jessica Chastain?

It has become clear that Rebecca Ferguson won the summer.

The Swedish newcomer, the undisputed breakout star of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, already has joined The Girl on the Train (after flirting with Gambit), is so on demand. She’s so on demand, she is giving me major Jessica Chastain vibes.

Ferguson, you see, is uniquely positioned to be in a lot of great projects. She already is set to pop up in Meryl Streep’s Florence Foster Jenkins, and – lucky her! – she is poised to star opposite Michael Fassbender in not one but two new projects. The first is the Prometheus sequel, and the other is The Snowman, a procedural based on a successful book series about an idiosyncratic Oslo detective named Harry Hole, who is investigating the murder of a woman whose scarf is found wrapped around a snowman.

And she might be taking over for Kate Winslet in Guernsey (aka The Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Society).

Not bad, no?

Photo: GettyImages.co.jp.

Update 1: Speaking of La Winslet (because I did, ever so briefly and in passing), she is going to play 1920s photography muse-cum-photograpger Lee Miller in a new biopic.

Update 2: The Girl on the Train is scheduled for an Oct. 27 release – Oct. 27, 2016 – and Joy’s Édgar Ramírez also has gotten a ticket to the fun.

Suburbicon Fella

Hail to a lovely partnership.

George Clooney (Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty) is reuniting with his Hail, Caesar! directors, the Coen brothers, for Suburbicon, a project they will write and he will helm.

A veritable noir drama akin to the Coens’ debut, 1984’s Blood Simple, Suburbicon will revolve around a small crime in the 1950s.

Photo: GettyImages.com.au.

Sweet Surprises Are Coming

Exactly how did I miss this 10 days ago?

NBC has commissioned a pilot for an unscripted show from Adam Levine (who has a first-look deal with the Peacock) and director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers).

Inspired by Maroon 5’s “Sugar,” the hour-long show will feature unsuspecting fans getting surprises from the stars they love at major events in their lives. A team of improv experts will aid produce the unforgettable moments.

Sounds cute. And like SoFine just may fare better at this variety-show stuff than Neil Patrick Harris. Has anyone paid any mind to NPH’s show this fall?

Photo: E! Online.

Daddy Dearest

For a biopic about one of the modern era’s most fascinating, most influential figures, Steve Jobs is a fine...family drama?

Yep...and that is one of the least confounding things about the Aaron Sorkin-written, Danny Boyle-directed film that finally opened wide today. This is a puzzling piece of cinema that will leave you thinking of Jobs (that other, Ashton Kutcher-led movie about the late Apple genius) rather fondly, which is weird because – hello! – this film has Michael Fassbender playing the guy, and the Fass is pretty fackin’ genius, too.

He is, but not in this case.

Here he looks out of place.

And totally not like Steve Jobs.

Evidently, that little detail was of little consequence to the filmmakers leading the project. If I am remembering the press leading up to today, Boyle and Sorkin, in particular, have said that they sought to capture the essence of a legend, not his ticks, which is why they went with the actor that did not end up passing on the project they thought was better-suited for the part and not the one who better resembled him.

OK, fine. I can work with that.

The but comes from the fact that Steve Jobs fails to shine a light on its subject in any comprehensive manner, in spite of being based on the acclaimed Walter Isaacson biography, which I understand, is (still) the definitive source on Jobs. This is a biopic that breaks the rules of biopics from the get-go because it doesn’t stick to a traditional mold for biographical storytelling. Lately, the trend has been to focus on certain key passages of a notable person’s life, rather than spinning a birth-to-death yarn that chronicles their accomplishments. Sorkin does that, but I cannot help but wonder if he, perhaps, was thinking he was living in 2115, a year in which I imagine a proposition like this one would have worked infinitely better.

The Oscard Social Network screenwriter has set the action of the film between 1984 and 1998, backstage before three seemingly pivotal Apply-product launches that end up turning into these no-better-moment opportunities for a handful of characters from Jobs’ personal and professional lives – including Chrisann Brennan (played by Katherine Waterston), an ex pleading with him to recognize he is the father of her daughter; Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (portrayed by Seth Rogen), and Jeff Daniels’ John Sculley, the company’s CEO from 1983 to 1993 – to request audiences with the guy they feel and think has done ’em some wrong.

Like, really?

Once you get past picturing how Alejandro G. Iñárritu might have shot the behind-the-scenes drama you would not be wrong to anticipate a cameo by Jerry Springer. Or Sally Jessy Raphael, to be historically accurate.

I have to admire Sorkin’s gumption, to write such a squabble-happy script about a visionary beloved by the world. He was just a man, Steve Jobs, appears to say. He was just a man with really mundane problems, really f---ed-up issues, and really impertinent people close to him.

The only element that works super-well in the film is Kate Winslet. She, too, plays an actual Apple figure, Joanna Hoffman, the company’s marketing maven and Jobs’ right-hand woman/confidante. Winslet is unburdened by playing a familiar face at the global level, so her portrayal comes across as more convincing, which, I know, that is a very odd thing to say about a performance in a biopic.

Alas, this isn’t your typical biopic, remember?

Now...can we focus on Fassbender’s Macbeth? Clearly, if he is to court Oscar again this year, it will have to be with that upcoming release.

My Rating **

Photo: Universal Pictures.

Introducing Jessica Jones

She’s coming, yo.

Netflix has released the first trailer for its Marvelous upcoming Krysten Ritter-led A.K.A. Jessica Jones, its follow-up to the hit Daredevil series that dropped for streaming last spring.

Ritter plays a superhero suffering from PTSD (David Tennant’s villainous Kilgrave has been messin’ with her mind!), which leads her to call it quits and to open her own detective agency, from which she ends up being of assistance to others, including other superheroes.

Mike Colter (TV’s The Good Wife) turns up as her love interest, Luke Cage, who is also getting a stand-alone series on the streamer – a series that will feature Alfre Woodard as his main antagonist.

Jessica Jones will be available for binging on Nov. 20.

Photo: Mirror.co.uk.

Hello Time

Wow!

Adele has been officially back for like, five days, and girlfriend’s already dazzling with that voice and breaking new ground and s---.

Indeed, the six-minute video for the British sensation’s first single off of her eagerly anticipated 25 album, “Hello,” is turning heads in its own right because it is the first-of-its-kind to be shot with IMAX cameras. Hot director Xavier Dolan (Mommy) directed it, and, yes, that’s Tristan Wilds (The CW’s 90210, HBO’s The Wire) co-starring in it with the singer.

Check it out:



Hey, did you hear that 25 just might be Adele’s last...age album? Ha! Had you going there for a sec, huh.

25 will be available for purchase on Nov. 20.

A Gay Freeskier

Another day, another queer Olympian making news.

Yes, Caitlyn Jenner’s I Am Cait got picked up for a second season by E!, but I’m talking about Gus Kenworthy.

The 24-year-old silver medal-winner freeskier came out of the closet yesterday, publicly, via an ESPN The Magazine cover story.

X-tremely gay...and proud. Plus cute? Terrific combo!

Photo: ESPN.Go.com.

Getting Colossal, Too

Bridge of Spies star and bf-of-Nina Dobrev Austin Stowell is getting Colossal.

The up-and-comer with the jawline is set to co-star opposite Anne Hathaway in this Godzilla-meets-Lost in Translation project that’s now in production.

The Oscar winner stars as a woman who returns to her hometown after some personal and professional drama, only to realize that she is somehow and bizarrely mentally connected to these events in Tokyo, where a giant lizard is wreaking havoc.

Stowell will play her bf.

Photo: Today.com.

Do Not Mess with This Woman

It may have taken quite a bit for us to see how Jane Got a Gun, but it looks like the wait will have been well worth it.

Natalie Portman stars in the looong-in-the-making western, which she also set out to produce after winning her Oscar for Black Swan, as a woman forced to defend her home after a bunch of outlaws come a-knockin’ and lookin’ to kill her barely alive husband (Noah Emmerich).

The Gift’s Joel Edgerton turns up as the ex-boyfriend she turns to for help, while Ewan McGregor portrays the leader of the villains – a role that was originally Edgerton’s. Rodrigo Santoro and Boyd Holbrook (Netflix’s Narcos) are also on board.

Check out the movie’s first international trailer now.

Photo: MovieWeb.com.

The Walking Victorian Dead

After years of development and slowdowns and false starts, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies starring Natalie Portman Emma Stone Lily James (Cinderella) is finally coming to theaters this winter.

A mash-up of genres in the vein of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the movie features James as a still-feisty Elizabeth Bennet, whose fire comes not only from the place we grew up reading about but from a burning desire to stay allive in the face of, well...zombies as well.

Sam Riley (Maleficent) plays her Mr. Darcy, while Jack Huston and Matt Smith take on the roles of Mr. Wickham and the wife-seeking Mr. Collins, respectively.

Game of Thrones stars Charles Dance and Lena Heady are also features, as Mr. Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, while Bella Heathcote and Suki Waterhouse are among the rest of the Bennet sisters.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is due out on Feb. 5. Check out the first full trailer now.

Photo: HitFix.com.

A New Frank-N-Furter for a New Era

Orange Is the New Black Emmy nominee Laverne Cox – who is also in the must-see Gotham Independent Film Award-nominated Grandma starring Lily Tomlin – is set to make history once more next season.

The transgender actress (the first-ever to receive an Emmy nod) is going to star as Dr. Frank-N-Furter on Fox’s take on The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Set to air as a two-hour like, super-event-y reimagining of the Broadway show-turned-cult classic film, the televised Rocky Horror Picture Show should not interfere with Cox’s work on the upcoming CBS legal offering, Doubt.

Get it, Ms. Cox!

Photo: Stylabl.com.

Oprah Takes Weight Watchers

So Oprah is on Weight Watchers now.

Actually, it was announced earlier this week that the Big O – a longtime member of the program, evidently – has bought 10 percent of the diet company as an investment, which, of course, immediately boosted its share price once the news was made public on Oct. 19.

Alas, Oprah has her work cut out for her, and folks are saying that escuing the debt-laden company will cost her some points.

No matter, this sounds like such an Oprah thing to do.

Photo: RedCarpetReportTV.com.

Baby Antagonist

Make room for a man, Ansel Elgort.

Jon Hamm has signed on to join the actor-turned-DJ/producer in director Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, a thriller about a young getaway driver who listens to the beat of his own personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. Until he is forced to work for a crime boss and has to deal with a heist gone wrong.

The Emmy-winning Mad Man will play said crime boss.

Like a boss, natch.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ Lily James is also on board.

Photo: Variety.com.