Entertainment news for May 24, 1991
Movies
Executive producer Michael Apted seems to have nailed down
his Dracula — and Francis Ford Coppola is directing. Apted (Class
Action) first asked Daniel Day-Lewis to play the role, but the actor
was already committed to The Last of the Mohicans. Now it looks like
Gary Oldman will be up for the Count. If signed, he'll play opposite
Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins when the script by Jim Hart (who
cowrote this Christmas' Hook) goes into production in late August.
But Universal Pictures owns the name Dracula for the screen, and that
raises another question: What is Columbia going to call its movie? No
answer to that one yet.
Director Paul Schrader has been keeping a tight lid on The Light Sleeper, which has just begun shooting in New York. However, sources report that Schrader's original screenplay concerns a drug runner (Willem Dafoe) who tries desperately to get out of the business but is drawn back by the machinations of his ex-wife (Susan Sarandon).
TV
Roseanne Barr's first TV movie for ABC was scheduled to
begin shooting on May 20 in L.A. — if producers could find a
location. The problem: Backfield in Motion, about a mother-son
football team, demands the use of a football field and most of them
were booked for graduation ceremonies. ''No one thought about that,''
admits a spokesman for the project. The movie takes place in a
''football-crazed'' community where the widowed Barr rebels when she's
asked to bake cookies for the upcoming father-son game. Turns out
she'd rather play. Look for Barr's character to also score some
points with the school's vice principal, who just happens to be
played by hubby Tom Arnold.
Books
Castle Rock Entertainment shelled out $1.75 million for the
film rights to Stephen King's latest novel, Needful Things, due this
October from Viking.
Investigative reporter Robert Sam Anson (Exile, Best Intentions) is close to signing with Simon & Schuster for an inside look at Disney.
Music
Willie Nelson partners with ''revenooers''? That's the irony
now that the IRS — which seized the singer's bank accounts, homes, and
recording studio last fall — has agreed to join in a direct marketing
scheme with Willie. To recoup some of an alleged tax debt of $16.7
million, the feds are going in on a new Nelson solo album, aptly
titled The IRS Tapes. The record, just out, has 25 original songs
from a cache of unreleased masters. Nelson, now on tour with the Highwaymen in Australia,
is hopeful: ''If we can sell a million albums, that will go a long way
to getting the IRS off my back. Then all I have to do is start
over.''
Written by: Leonard Klady, Pat H. Broeske, Tina Jordan, Cheryl McCall
