Oscar-nominated director David O. Russell doesn’t just want to direct a sequel to "The Fighter" – he wants to write it, too. Russell, who by all reports did a significant amount of shaping and revising on the Best Picture nominee, told MTV News that he thinks it "would be awesome" to do another film, this one focusing on the three fights that Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg's character) had with Arturo Gatti. "I would do it whenever anyone says they're ready," Russell said. "I'm ready to write it." Any possible sequel, he added, is in its "infancy." (MTV.com)
Angie Han has collected concept art from the Disney short "Tick Tock," which isn't exactly rare since the film has shown at shorts festivals, and Pixar's "Newt" (left), which is more intriguing since the film was cancelled last year after some years of development. Pixar showed off some of the art for the film, which was to have been directed by Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who directed the short "Lifted" for Pixar. It was about the world's last two remaining blue-footed newts, who are supposed to get together to keep the species alive but find they don't really get along, a plot that, as Han points out, has some uncomfortable similarities to the upcoming Blue Sky production "Rio." But it looks pretty cool, even if we’ll never see anything beyond this … (Slashfilm)
The Oscars' mystery man, Banksy, left his mark around Los Angeles without ever showing his face. If you search online (on TheWrap, for instance), you can find a photo of someone who may well be the elusive graffiti artist – and now the Daily Mail says it has uncovered Mrs. Banksy as well. They’ve got a bunch of photos, along with details about her normal job (a parliamentary lobbyist), where they got married (Las Vegas) and what she tells the neighbors about hubby's job (doing the art for cookbooks and album covers). But Banksy himself, they say, tells people that he designs the sets for awards shows. (The Daily Mail)
Dana Harris does the math to see if the Groupon promotion that sold discount tickets for "The Lincoln Lawyer" made sense for Lionsgate (which made up the difference between the $6 paid by coupon holders and the full ticket price) and if it affected the boxoffice rankings for the weekend. This effort is somewhat hampered by the fact that she doesn't really know the numbers, and Lionsgate and Groupon aren't inclined to supply them. But she concludes that the 40,000 discount tickets used over the weekend (89 percent of which were used by people who would not otherwise have seen the movie, according to Lionsgate's exit surveys) might have been enough to give the film its edge over "Paul," which grossed $13.1 million to the $13.4 million for "Lincoln Lawyer." When you factor in everything, she estimates that the final cost to Lionsgate is only about $75,000, relatively cheap considering the promotion and extra customers it brings in. But she thinks that its affect on opening-weekend boxoffice is beside the point, and that the main thing is that Groupon is positioning itself as "the movie-marketing vehicle of choice." (indieWIRE)
Playwright Arthur Laurent told a Connecticut blogger that at the urging of Stephen Sondheim he was withdrawing permission for Barbra Streisand to launch a new film version of the musical "Gypsy," but was that the final word? Universal Pictures tells Kate Ward that they're in negotiations to acquire the project, which has not been killed … and Warner Bros., the studio reputed to have been involved, says they never made a deal. Whether it makes sense for Streisand, at age 70, to star in a vehicle written for a much younger woman is another matter entirely … (Entertainment Weekly)
