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Film News

24th February 2007

Film News from Chris Sloley.

DiCaprio: The Smartest Guy in the Room?

Totalfilm.com is reporting that Leonardo DiCaprio has become all political following his adventures into the evil underbelly of the blood-fuelled diamond trade in the aptly named The Blood Diamond. DiCaprio will star and produce an Enron-based film based on Kurt Eichenwald's book Conspiracy of Fools, a somewhat thrilling insight into the multi-million pound controversy from 2001. Word is it will be a bit more 'Hollywood' than the fact-filled piece Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, so keep your eyes on this when production rolls around later in the year.

Eckhart Gets Great Part in Dark Knight

Aaron Eckhart, the film equivalent of that person on campus from your town who smile and nod at but can never remember the name of, has landed the part of Harvey 'Two Face' Dent in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. The everyman from Thank You For Smoking and Paycheck will sidle up alongside the returning Batman, Christian Bale, and also new Joker, Heath Ledger. Rumour has it Katie Holmes will not be returning with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams touted to fill the shoes of Rachel Dawes. The follow-up to the hugely successful winged-superhero's re-imagining will zip-line onto screens on July 18th 2008.

Hardly Boys

The Americana that is teen-detectives The Hardy Boys is also headed for our big screens under the not-so-safe-hands of Shawn Levy. Responsible for such 'hits' as Night at the Museum and The Pink Panther, Levy has bizarrely joined forces with Ben Stiller and...um...Tom Cruise (yeah, that's a bit weird) for the adaptation of The Hardy Men, a modern show of what the boys did when they grew up. Let's say nobodies really holding their breath but the Stiller/Cruise dynamic could work.

Die Hard 4: Die You Bastard

Just a quick note, a trailer for the fourth instalment of Bruce Willis as John McLane, hostage-negotiator extraordinaire, is coming to our screens full of explosions on July 29th 2007. Having been announced as Live Free Die Hard it is now sticking to its technological theme under the banner Die Hard 4.0, which sees the technology-filled world taken hostage. Willis will be joined by wise-cracking doofus Justin Long of Dodgeball and Accepted fame.

Chris Sloley