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Exclusive: Vertical has acquired North American rights to the neo-noir The Long Game, based on the acclaimed short story by New York Times bestselling author Janet Fitch (White Oleander), slating it for release in theaters and on demand in 2025.

Marking the directorial debut of Jace Anderson, who wrote the script with husband Adam Gierasch, The Long Game sees Oscar nom Kathleen Turner return to the genre in which she burst upon the scene with Body Heat, alongside Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children), and newcomer Sekai Abenì.

Abenì plays Holly Sloan, who needs a break. When she meets and falls for grifter Richard Metzger (Haley), it’s not quite love at first sight, but perhaps an opportunity to help her career. And all Holly has to do is pull a little con on ’80s starlet Mariah McKay (Turner), a rich recluse who has faded into a Norma Desmond-like obscurity.

Exclusive: Lauren Oliver — the bestselling YA author, screenwriter and producer known for titles like Panic and Before I Fall — has today announced the launch of her new media company, StoryGiants, also naming projects currently on its slate.

StoryGiants is a decentralized company with employees and partners in L.A., NY, Palo Alto, Austin, Dubai and France, which will look to create powerful and compelling stories across a variety of mediums, leveraging both technological and structural innovation to improve production efficiency and grow the value of great IP faster.

Related Story David Dastmalchian Launches Production Company Good Fiend Films Related Story 'Panic' YA Drama Canceled By Amazon After One Season Related Story Amazon Studios Inks First-Look Deal With Lauren Oliver's Glasstown Entertainment

The company is building at launch upon its own library of IP, the goal being to introduce universes of content with myriad expressions of media and revenue opportunities.

Hayden Christensen, whom Star Wars fans mainly know as Anakin Skywalker aka the Chosen One, celebrated his 39th birthday yesterday, and the internet has been showing him some love.

It’s been a long and turbulent journey for the Prequel Trilogy and the people behind the heroes from the age of the Republic. A decade ago, fans of that galaxy far, far away would unanimously agree that The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith were terrible movies that in no way honored the legacy of the Original Trilogy. Of course, even then, some people believed that there were redeemable qualities to George Lucas’ vision, but actor Hayden Christensen’s portrayal of Anakin in the latter two films didn’t garner a positive reaction.

Suffice it to say, the actor had to go through a lot of bullying from Star Wars fans and trolls, much like...

The La Weekly's Karina Longworth has turned a lunch with Elvis Mitchell, a lot of research and several phone calls into today's must-read. "One of the best known, and definitely most controversial, living film critics in America, Mitchell is both irresistibly charming and legendarily incapable of playing by the rules, or perhaps simply oblivious to them." And now: "He's been brought to Lacma as the embodiment of a major break from business as usual at the museum's film department." In one of the best pieces of film-related reporting I've seen in a long while, Karina outlines two histories, first, that of Lacma's evolution from "one of the city's premier destinations for cinephiles" to an institution with a "strategy to plumb the film industry for patrons," and second, that of the "former New York Times film critic who lunches at swank restaurants with movie stars and drives off in a cherry-red convertible.

Tomorrow and Tuesday in Los Angeles, Redcat will be presenting Two Nights with Ernie Gehr: Early Films and New Digital Works. "It's an eye- and mind-expanding lineup," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It also provides a condensed primer to some of the issues at stake in American avant-garde cinema, which, partly because of its historical opposition to the dictates of commercial mainstream moviemaking and partly because it resists commodification (unlike, say, abstract painting, oppositional cinema doesn't rack up big sales at Sotheby's), has been relegated to the status of museum pieces and festival marginalia."

Also in La, the Museum of Contemporary Art opens two exhibitions today, Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles and Kenneth Anger: Icons, both on view through February 27.

For the Voice, Melissa Anderson meets Mario Montez, "featured player in Jack Smith's polysexual fantasia Flaming Creatures (1963), Andy Warhol's first drag-queen superstar,...

La Writer Perplexed by Homophobic Censorship of His Facebook Page

Over the weekend, Facebook deemed the photo below “abusive material” and removed it from the profile of Los Angeles-based author Richard Metzger.

The pic above is from a 2008 episode of the British soap opera Eastenders. An image of two fully clothed, adult men sharing a closed-mouth kiss that has been deemed appropriate for the whole of England, but is apparently too racy for Facebook.

The photo had been posted to Metzger’s profile by Brit blogger Niall O’Conghaile, who received a written warning from Facebook for sharing the pic. Both men write for DangerousMinds.net, and have been using the popular site to protest what they see as blatant homophobia.

TV's changing landscape is washing soaps away

A gradual loss of fans led to less advertising revenue — which didn’t impact soaps right away. But when the soaps became...

The work I’m going to talk about in this edition of "Watch Out!" is actually a TV show, albeit a short-lived one. How short-lived? Well, they pulled the plug at the last minute from its Us airing.

This UK-produced series (from Channel 4) was bought by The Channel Formerly Known As Sci-Fi, who decided to cut the 16 episode 30-minute show down to 4 reasonably sanitized one-hour specials. But even that, they didn’t air. Sometimes, you just can't edit around the obscene content.

The show is called Disinformation (alternatively known as DisinfoNation) and has been succinctly dubbed as “the punk rock 60 Minutes.” I really couldn’t have said it better. It is a 60 Minutes-Dateline-type documentary program, but with an obvious slant towards the alternative lifestyle. They tackle subjects like she-male porn, modern-day Satanic cults, and redneck home videos. Fringe science, the occult and conspiracy theories, basically. They also have human interest...

Dangerous Minds is one of my favorite new sites. It's the brainchild of Richard Metzger, the brilliant Brit once behind Disinfo.com pictured at left, and Tara McGinley, a costume designer/stylist (and Metzger's wife). Although the site covers everything from sex to pop culture and "kooks," my favorite is naturally the movie section.

Metzger and friends dig up and dissect the obscure, the weird, and the fantastic. Just a sampling of the website turns up info on an art show featuring "production drawings" and "commissioned work" from Alejandro Jodorowsky's aborted Dune adaptation featuring artists like H.R. Giger, Moebius, and Chris Foss, as well as a deep-cut discussion of the Mexican midnight movie staple Coffin Joe, which Metzger describes as "a rant-prone Nietzschean Übermensch with a top hat, cape and excessively long fingernails." Seriously, can you pass that up?

Sure, some of these movies are things you might never want to see,...

Super cool site DangerousMinds.net features a 20 minute video interview with David Tennant and Russell T Davies in which the outgoing star and showrunner of Doctor Who chat about what's in the future for both of them as well as various elements of the series as a whole. There's lots to see and hear in this interview which took place after the Sand Diego Comic Con, and we've got the interview below for your perusal - here's a snippet of the introduction by interviewer Richard Metzger... How...

Boing-Boing has an excellent video interview up with Russell T Davies and David Tennant, letting them wrap-up (and bask) their time on and as Doctor Who.

 

Interviewer Richard Metzger calls Davies the "British Rod Serling" and compares Tennant's Comic-Con appearance  to something akin to Beatlemania. I don't think he's far off with either description.

 

The video below is fun, cheeky (Davies is such a queen. I love him) and has one or two spoilers about the upcoming three specials for the rest the year. 

 

Check it out: 

Source:Doctor Who Exit Interview: Boing Boing...