Six Feet Under star Michael C. Hall, who plays tight-ass gay funeral director David Fisher on the hit HBO series, has agreed to co-star in director John Woo’s futuristic thriller, Paycheck. Based on a Philip K. Dick short story, Paycheck will feature Ben Affleck as a man who has two years of his memory stolen by his employer. Hall plays an FBI agent investigating Affleck’s memory loss. Signing on to such a high-profile movie is a big step up for the talented actor, who was a virtual unknown to TV and film audiences before his gig on Six Feet Under. Hall got his start on Broadway, where he had lead roles in both Cabaret and Chicago.
Musicals Are Richards’ Life
Queer Chicago producer Marty Richards can’t get his fill of show tunes. Richards is in negotiations to bring gay tunesmith Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd to the big screen. The story follows a demonic Fleet Street barber who finds a tasty new use for his clients—as a filling for meat pies. Richards hopes Chicago’s gay director, Rob Marshall, will sign on for Sweeney once the deal is inked. Also on Richard’s development slate is a big-screen hip-hop version of Cy Coleman and Ira Gasman’s 1997 Tony-winning musical, The Life, another unorthodox musical, which focuses on the trials and tribulations of Times Square pimps and hookers, including a working girl who wants to leave ‘the life.’
Too Closer for Comfort
Closer, Patrick Marber’s explicit Broadway play about two intertwined straight couples who explore the darker side of their sex lives, is coming to the big screen. So far director Mike Nichols has gotten the supercute Natalie Portman and the supercuter Jude Law to agree to star in the brutally funny romantic comedy, which has been described as a Carnal Knowledge for Generation X. Out producer Scott Rudin, who produced the London and Broadway productions, is on board for the film version as well. Fans of the play on both sides of the pond say one of the funniest scenes is a sexy cyberchat between the two men, Larry and Dan, in which Dan pretends to be his own girlfriend.
Arteta and Holofcener Get Together
It’s a ‘marriage of sorts’ for two indie-film world darlings: Miguel Arteta, gay-friendly director of Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, and several episodes of Six Feet Under, and Nicole Holofcener, writer/director of Lovely & Amazing and the Anne Heche vehicle Walking and Talking. Arteta and Holofcener will collaborate on a remake of the 2000 Swedish film Together, set in a ’70s hippie commune whose members explore lesbianism, transvestitism, veganism, and high-minded philosophical ideas and wind up questioning their beliefs as the world changes around them. Holofcener is currently working on the script, which Arteta will direct. No word on where the new version will be set, but Romeo’s hoping for a climate that will be more conducive to nudity than Stockholm.
Write2Romeo@yahoo.com.