SXSW has shut down for another year and we now resume your regularly scheduled Morning Deal Report with the surprising news that Knowing topped the weekend box office charts. Its $24.8 million haul would seem to indicate that those of us who think Nicolas Cage makes nothing but crap these days are in the minority, but how can that be? I Love You, Man took the second spot with a slightly disappointing $18 million, while the Julia Roberts/Clive Owen caper Duplicity finished third with $14.4 million.
The Coen Brothers are back in the remake business – sort of. Ethan and Joel Coen will bring a new adaptation of the Charles Portis novel True Grit to the screen, but it won’t be a reprise of the 1969 John Wayne version. “Portis' novel is about a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father's killer in hostile Indian territory. But while the original film was a showcase for Wayne, the Coens' version will tell the tale from the girl's p.o.v.” And as only Variety would put it, “Pic will be their first period Oater.”
More bad news for Aquaman: Brian Grazer will produce the romantic comedy Merman for Universal. “Story follows a merman who comes to land so he can win back his mermaid fiancée, who has left him for a real man.” So what are they saying? Real men don’t have gills?
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