Movies

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Forecast 2002

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THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE Mark Wahlberg puts a new spin on an old Cary Grant role

In 1999, Jonathan Demme and his Tuesday-night movie club watched Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. "I immediately thought, Will Smith and Thandie Newton!" remembers Demme. But with Smith filming Ali, the director turned to Mark Wahlberg (right, with Newton and Demme) for this remake of the 1963 caper. "It starts from the same place as the first one," says Demme. (A woman finds out her husband's been murdered and his money is missing.) "It's a complete, upside-down, inside-out turnaround on Grant's role. While he was suave and debonair, Mark is intense and street-smart." Not that the remake won't draw inspiration from the original. "Our movie is like a hummingbird," adds Demme. "We keep zipping back to the source to suck up goodies and then we fly away." (August)

MEN IN BLACK 2 Agents Jay and Kay--alias Smith and Jones--reteam to prevent an alien resurrection in a sequel to the smash hit

"I think it's going to be one of those rare sequels that's bigger than the first one," predicts Will Smith of the follow-up to Barry Sonnenfeld's $251 million-grossing comedy blockbuster. "The chemistry with Tommy Lee Jones and me, we so hit the ground running," says Smith. "We're like an old married couple." Since we left Agents Jay (Smith) and Kay (Jones) in 1997, Kay's brain has been "neuralized" of any memory of his MIB work, and he is now toiling in the U.S. Postal Service. Jay, then, must convince him to join the crusade against some new scum: The Practice vixen Lara Flynn Boyle, who plays the film's shape-shifting alien villain. "She looks incredible," says Smith. "She wants to take over Earth, so she comes and takes on the form of a Victoria's Secret model. It's the first magazine that the alien spaceship comes across." Good thing it wasn't Modern Maturity. (July 3)

UNDERCOVER BROTHER As a secret-agent man, Eddie Griffin battles boy bands and Bird lovers

Spider-Man isn't the only web-oriented hero headed for theaters: This spy spoof, based on an online animated series created by screenwriter John Ridley (Three Kings), stars Eddie Griffin (below, with Chris Kattan) as Anton Jackson, agent for the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. in its battle against The Man, boy bands, and people who call Larry Bird the greatest basketball player of all time. For director Malcolm Lee, it's a big change after the romantic comedy The Best Man. "My whole thing [on that movie]was, 'Let's get into the characters, let the humor come out of that,'" he says. "But a flat-out comedy can't be that way; it's gotta be the set pieces and one-liners....You're trying to appeal to a wider audience." A conflicted pause. "If not a whiter audience." (May 31)

CHICAGO Miramax went to the ends of the earth--and the alphabet--before casting Zeta-Jones and Zellweger in its pitch-black musical

From the moment Chicago came slinking back to Broadway in a sexy 1996 revival, Miramax began talking up a movie version of the ultracynical musical (fashioned by Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb, and John Kander) about two Jazz Age broads on trial for murder. How about Madonna and Goldie Hawn as the mankillers? But stars, directors, and writers came and went until Rob Marshall, who'd helmed ABC's Annie remake, suggested a new story spin: Turn what he calls a "vaudevillian stage piece" into something more cinematic by making it one woman's semidelusional fantasy. Bingo--Miramax greenlit a new script cofashioned by Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters), casting Renee Zellweger as celebrity wannabe Roxie Hart and Catherine Zeta-Jones (below) as media darling Velma Kelly, opposite Richard Gere as her slick attorney. "It's about the perversity of celebrity," says Marshall. "And about the hunger to have your 15 minutes." And, as the show says, all that jazz. (December)

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