The Mark Boal-scripted Triple Frontier, once attached to longtime collaborator and director Katherine Bigelow, perhaps as a follow-up to Zero Dark Thirty, appears to finally be materializing after a period of insufferable gestating. According to Deadline, the Paramount-backed thriller set in the “notorious border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where the Iguazu and Parana rivers converge” is currently involved in ongoing talks with Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy.
Replacing Bigelow at the helm is J.C. Chandor (All is Lost, A Most Violent Year) on a project that Tom Hanks, Will Smith, and Johnny Depp all originally circled. Produced by Chandor alongside Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Alex Gartner, nothing’s been made official yet on the Tatum and Hardy front, but the news is much-welcomed progress.
In more casting news, The Hollywood Reporter has announced that two-time Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes and two-time Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie have joined Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Sony’s Holmes and Watson. That sentence didn’t end the way you thought it would, did it? Yes, a comedy that’ll see Ferrell dawn the deerstalker and Reilly as his invaluable sidekick has locked down the two formidable drama actors in currently unspecified roles.
Fiennes definitely commands a comedic touch, as those familiar with this past summer’s A Bigger Splash will attest, as does Laurie, who’s no stranger to the humorous yarn either. The duo will join the Etan Cohen-helmed picture with shooting already underway in London.
In incredibly promising news, Deadline has divulged that Sylvester Stallone has come aboard to direct and star opposite Adam Driver in Tough as They Come. Based on Travis Mills’ remarkable memoir, the drama will depict “U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Mills, one of only five soldiers to survive a quadruple amputation from a battlefield injury.”
The film is currently being shopped by WME and will focus on the soldier’s relationship with his father-in-law at its core, “who stood by his side from the day he got home from the hospital.” Driver will portray Mills and Stallone the father-in-law Craig Buck.
Lastly, with Boyd Holbrook and Olivia Munn already attached, Shane Black’s reboot of the Predator franchise looks to be getting a dramatic and comedic boost. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes and Key and Peele’s Keegan-Michael Key have joined the cast of 20th Century Fox’s reimagining of the sci-fi staple.
Plot details are thin, but it is believed the film will take place in the suburbs and follow an ensemble cast led by a pair of ex-marines, to be played by Holbrook and Rhodes, with a tagalong resident (Key) and a scientist (Munn). The film is scheduling a late-winter start date for production.