Probably not as brilliant as casting The Practice's Boyle as the villain, Serleena, a shape-shifting extraterrestrial who takes on the form of a Victoria's Secret model. When Famke Janssen dropped out, Boyle had one day to fetch a permission slip from her TV boss, David E. Kelley. "I said, 'David, I know this is crappy timing, but I really want to go do this movie,'" she recalls. "He asked me one question: 'Does it mean a lot to you? Then we'll make it work.'" Her reward: a costume that the actress describes as "quite a plethora of leather.... I have cleavage that we pulled up from my kneecaps."
As for rumors that Michael Jackson filmed a small part..."Am I allowed to talk about that?" Boyle asks. "I keep getting memos from Barry. So they've scared me s---less." Luckily for us, Smith never got around to reading them. "He's an undercover Man in Black on the alien affirmative action program," he says. "It's just a cameo, but he played it dead serious." Sounds truly off-the-wall. THE LOWDOWN Judging from the trailer, Jay and Kay's second mission should be just as successful as the first. (July 3)
Road to Perdition
STARRING Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci
WRITTEN BY David Self
DIRECTED BY Sam Mendes
Dreamworks cohead of movie production walter Parkes was in the midst of reading Self's script when Hanks swiped it from him, read it himself, and declared: I must make this. And lo, it came to be. Perdition, based on Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner's pulpy yet thematically rich 1998 graphic novel, is the Depression-era tale of Michael Sullivan (Hanks), husband, father, and Mob hitman (in the employ of father figure Newman), who unravels after his wife (Leigh) is killed. During the quest for vengeance that follows, Sullivan's son (14-year-old newcomer Hoechlin) becomes exposed to the dark truth about his father.
Self (Thirteen Days) was turned on to the DC Comics book by friend and DreamWorks cofounder Steven Spielberg, who knew that Self was eager to write a Mob flick. Yet Perdition had its challenges. "Usually when you're adapting a book, you have the problem of reducing," says Self. "Here it was the problem of expanding. There wasn't enough story--though there were plenty of great visuals." DreamWorks and Hanks brought aboard Mendes, who was searching for something completely different to follow up his Oscar-winning directorial debut, American Beauty. "I wanted to deal in period," says Mendes. "I wanted to deal with something more epic, that told its story more in pictures than in words." Working again with acclaimed cinematographer Conrad Hall (also an Oscar winner for Beauty), Mendes drew from such classics as Giant and Once Upon a Time in America for visual inspiration, and they shot the picture in and around Chicago during winter 2000-01. DreamWorks had been eyeing a December 2001 release, but decided against it after Mendes asked for more time to finish editing and scoring. THE LOWDOWN The extra time is said to have paid off: DreamWorks thinks it has another summertime Saving Private Ryan. Our gravest reservation: Hanks' mustache. (July 12)
