Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing.
LaBeouf will play a student who's about to graduate from Yale Law School when he's manipulated into accepting a job at a prestige law firm and given privileged information about a multibillion-dollar lawsuit.
The novel, Grisham's first legal thriller since 2005's "The Broker," will be published in January by Random House.
Grisham's longtime rep, David Gernert, shopped the book by giving it to four producers. While some felt that lessened the book's chances to find a suitor in a tight marketplace, the strategy worked.
Par-based Di Bonaventura, who as an exec worked on the Grisham films "A Time to Kill" and "The Client," received the book in the Middle East, where he and LaBeouf were shooting "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." There, they agreed to do it together.
Deal gives Paramount another LaBeouf vehicle to follow the "Transformers" films, on which the studio partners with DreamWorks. He last starred for the studio in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."
Source: ComingSoon.net
– “Motorcade”: Big names are looking to join the convoy on this story of terrorists commandeering the presidential motorcade in Los Angeles. The studio is in talks with “Underworld” helmer Wiseman to direct Billy Ray’s script. The ICM-repped Wiseman is on a hot streak after his “Live Free or Die Hard” earned $380 million worldwide.– “Hereafter”: The supernatural-themed original screenplay by the Oscar-nominated Peter Morgan has been a priority at the new studio. And it could soon have a director, Eastwood, to whom the studio has reached out. Such a pairing would have the added appeal that it could go into production quickly given the helmer’s habit of shooting scripts after a minimum of development.
– “Dinner for Schmucks”: With original star Sacha Baron Cohen’s involvement wavering, the studio has reached out to another hot, and very busy, comedic actor: Carell. And director Jay Roach, who had long been attached, is considering coming back on board.
– “The Trial of the Chicago 7″: With a number of directors associated with it during the past year, DreamWorks hopes to attach a helmer quickly and get this high-priority project — which Steven Spielberg himself at one time was eyeing to direct — moving forward. Ben Stiller, fresh off the success of “Tropic Thunder,” recently has become the prime candidate.
– “Cowboys and Aliens”: The large-scale comic book adaptation is now being penned by writer-executive producers Kurtzman and Orci (”Transformers,” “Star Trek”), who took on the gig from “Iron Man” co-writers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. Imagine is producing, and director-producer Ron Howard, who remains a long shot to lens the film, is developing the project for attached star Robert Downey Jr.
– “Real Steel”: The futuristic boxing movie is being penned by “Dante’s Peak” scribe Les Bohem, who created and wrote the Spielberg-executive produced Sci Fi Channel show “Taken.”
– “The 39 Clues”: The project is a potential Spielberg directing vehicle, though it’s still in script phase, with Jeff Nathanson only recently hired to adapt the first novel, “The Maze of Bones,” in the 10-book “Clues” series.
– “Button Man”: “Eagle Eye” co-writer Hillary Seitz has turned in her latest draft of this adaptation of a graphic novel written by Arthur Ranson and John Wagner. There’s one key advantage to it moving forward: Mark Sourian, DreamWorks’ new co-president of production, was the original exec on the project.
I don’t really care what studio is putting out the movies as one movie varies from another just as much as kids on the playground, it doesn’t matter who makes em.
Are there any on this list that make you curious with even these brief descriptions?
DreamWorks has acquired the dramatic rights to the science fiction novel "Chocky" from Pollinger Ltd., the U.K. agency that handles the literary estate of the late author John Wyndham.
Spielberg will first shoot "Tintin" in early fall.
The director had prepped the Aaron Sorkin-scripted "The Trial of the Chicago Seven," but that became sketchy after he could not get rewrites during the writer's strike. Spielberg had enlisted Sacha Baron Cohen and talked to other high profile thesps about starring in a drama about the trial of anti-Vietnam war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That film will have to wait.
The Lincoln project could be ready for an early 2009 shoot because of several variables: Spielberg has proved adept at shooting back-to-back films, which he did most memorably when he made "Jurassic Park" and the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" in 1993. Also, his Lincoln project -- informed by the biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's "The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln" -- has a strong script by "Angels in America" playwright Tony Kushner (who rewrote "Munich" for Spielberg).
Spielberg also has Liam Neeson --who played Oskar Schindler -- ready to play Lincoln. Neeson agreed more than three years ago to play the role for Spielberg, and has been waiting for a start date.
Source: Variety
After 19 years since its debut in 1989, DreamWorks has finally secured the rights to adapt the Japanese manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell into a 3D live-action feature film. Both Universal and Sony were also chasing the rights, but Steven Spielberg himself took a personal interest in it and made sure it ended up in the hands of his company - DreamWorks. Spielberg says that Ghost in the Shell is one of his favorite stories and is "a genre that has arrived and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks." This plays off of the announcement from February that Akira, one of the other heralded Japanese anime properties, is being adapted by Warner Brothers as well.
Street Kings screenwriter Jamie Moss has been hired to write the adaptation. Ex-Marvel CEO Avi Arad and Steven Paul, who originally brought the project to the studio, will both produce. A director has not been announced yet. DreamWorks president of production Adam Goodman enthused that Ghost in the Shell is a property "that epitomizes 3-D live-action motion picture possibilities." A production schedule has not been announced, however it's likely DreamWorks will be aiming to get this together to follow Akira's debut in the summer of 2009.
Created by Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell was first published in 1989. It went on to generate two additional manga editions, three anime film adaptations, an anime TV series and three videogames. Ghost in the Shell is a futuristic police thriller dealing with the exploits of Motoko Kusanagi, a member of the covert operations section of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission, Section 9, which specializes in fighting technology-related crime. Although supposedly equal to all other members, Kusanagi fills the leadership role in the team, and is usually referred to as "the Major" due to her past rank in the armed forces. She is capable of superhuman feats, and bionically specialized for her job - her body is almost completely mechanized; only her brain and a segment of her spinal cord are organic.
I'm a huge fan of the two Ghost in the Shell anime movies and am incredibly excited to see this finally come together under Spielberg's discretion. It looks like the new trend in Hollywood definitely is adapting anime and it looks like both Paramount (Ghost in the Shell) and Warner Brothers (Akira) have their big properties. I only hope that Jamie Moss is a talented enough screenwriter to maintain the brilliant subtleties and undertones of the Ghost in the Shell series and not turn it into a steaming pile of Hollywood crap. For now I'll remain confident and maintain my excitement as this project develops.
Source:FirstShowing
There's currently a crisis in the theater industry and apparently it's all 
Steven Spielberg's fault. According to Variety coverage of Sunday's National Association of Broadcasters Show's Digitial Cinema Summit, the filmmaker was named as a constant obstacle in the transition to digital cinema.
Spielberg's insistence against releasing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull digitally was overruled last month when Paramount announced that it would indeed open the summer blockbuster on some digital screens, but the fact that it won't be a full digital release, coupled with the fact that Spielberg still doesn't "get" the fact that digital is superior to film, is a problematic issue for an industry having difficulties installing a necessary amount of digital projectors by 2009.
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners spoke at the summit, warning of a "potential train wreck" next year when all those monumental 3-D releases we've been hearing about (James Cameron's Avatar; DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens; Pixar's upgraded rereleases of Toy Story and Toy Story 2) are met with an inadequate amount of 3-D-equipped screens. For more than a year now, both Hollywood and NATO have been in agreement that by 2009 there will need to be anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 screens with 3-D capability in order to handle the full-digital-3-D releases, beginning with the March 27 opening of Monsters vs. Aliens. Unfortunately, since this time last year, the reality has been a mere doubling from around 500 screens to slightly more than 1,000.
