Juan Carlos Fresnadillo Directing 'The Last Witness', John Moore Takes 'I.T.', and More

28 Weeks Later and Intruders director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is in talks to develop and direct The Last Witness. The film is set up at 20th Century Fox and the script by Stefan Jaworski is described as "a ticking-clock thriller about the lone survivor of a bomb attack in Boston". [Variety]

Clint Eastwood's longtime producing buddy Robert Larenz made his directorial debut with the baseball drama Trouble with the Curve....which had plenty of troubles of its own. But now he's moving ahead on his next film, an action flick titled Past Due. Presumably this one won't star Eastwood as the story is said to be similar to David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, only led by a female. Okay.  Thompson Evans wrote the script and it also wound up on the Black List.

Horror film The Bringing once had Nicolas Winding Refn eying the director's chair, but he turned it down and producers have settled for some guy named Jeremy Lovering. The story is based on the widely circulated Youtube video of Elisa Lam, who was acting strangely in the Cecil Hotel elevator mere hours before she was found dead in the water tanks on the roof. The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles is the place where serial killers such as Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger lived briefly, and is reportedly one of the final places The Black Dahlia was seen alive. A fictional tale will be crafted around these events, centering on "the man investigating her death, and the nightmare he stumbles into." Lovering last directed the psychological thriller, In Fear.  [Deadline]

And unfortunately for all of us, John Moore continues to get work despite hitting us over the head with A Good Day to Die Hard and Max Payne.  He'll direct another film that will probably be terrible, the Pierce Brosnan thriller with the awful title, I.T. >sigh<  Anyway, this one is written by Live Free or Die Hard's William Wisher Jr. (feeling confident yet??) and has Brosnan as "a successful publisher whose relationship with a young I.T. consultant sours. He soon finds the former friend is using technology to threaten his family, business, and life." Blergh. [Deadline]

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Nicolas Winding May Direct Horror Film 'The Bringing'

With Drive and last summer's inscrutable Only God Forgives now firmly in the rear view, Nicolas Winding Refn has had a tough time settling on his next project. He's circled a few mainstream flicks such as The Equalizer and a Logan's Run remake, but left both perhaps because they were a little too mainstream. I have no facts to back up that statement; just consider it speculation on my part. Now Refn is circling a buzzed-about horror that Sony Pictures expects to be a really big deal.

Deadline reports Refn is in early talks to direct The Bringing, which Sony fought hard to win the rights to Brandon and Phillip Murphy's script. So what's the big deal? The film's genesis was the widely circulated Youtube video of Elisa Lam, who was acting strangely in the Cecil Hotel elevator mere hours before she was found dead in the water tanks on the roof. The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles is the place where serial killers such as Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger lived briefly, and is reportedly one of the final places Elizabeth Short (aka the Black Dahlia) was seen alive.

The Lam case will have nothing to do with the film but clearly was an inspiration on the story of "a man investigating a death at the hotel, and the nightmare he stumbles into." And why should we expect Refn to take this high-profile gig when he's passed up on so many others? Because he reached out to Sony for this one rather than the studio calling him, so clearly this is something he wants to do. That enthusiasm only calls into question the fate of Refn's proposed sex thriller Carey Mulligan became attached to some time ago.

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