John Lee Hancock may Direct McDonald's Drama 'The Founder'

The two most recognizable brands in the world are Disney and McDonald's. It can argued that too much of either is a bad thing, but filmmaker John Lee Hancock doesn't see it that way. He last directed Saving Mr. Banks, a biopic on the making of Disney's Mary Poppins, and now he's in talks to tell the story of McDonald's expansion into a global fast food empire.

Variety reports Hancock may direct The Founder, which centers on Ray "Big Mack" Croc, a businessman who acquired the efficiently-run burger franchise from the McDonald Brothers and grew it into the most successful fast food chain in history. Robert Siegel (The Wrestler) wrote the screenplay which is described as a cross between The Social Network and There will be Blood, an amazing combination if Hancock can realize it.

And there's some strong talented circling this one already. Producers had been seeking out Hancock and his Saving Mr. Banks star Tom Hanks since early on,  but both had turned it down. Hanks could change his mind if Hancock comes aboard, although he may have to fend of Michael Keaton who was waiting on a director before deciding if he would agree to play Croc.

When I think of how McDonald's has been portrayed in the movies I think of Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me first, and chances are so do most other people. So you can bet they'd like any film to come along and change that. Hancock, who mostly makes crowd-pleasing dramas, would be the right pick to put a happy face on McDonald's founding.

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John Lee Hancock to Direct Film on New York Mets Player Lenny Dykstra

The New York Mets were my team back when I still cared about baseball, and outside of Darryl Strawberry and Howard Johnson, Lenny Dykstra was my favorite player. The rough 'n tumble shortstop, nicknamed "Nails", was the team's leadoff hitter during the championship 1986 season, and it was a sad day when he was traded to the Phillies a few years later. His post-baseball career has been racked with scandal and run-ins with the law, and The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock may be bringing that story to the screen.

Hancock will reteam with The Blind Side producer Gil Netter for an untitled biopic on Dykstra. And it doesn't seem as if it will be an adaptation of Dykstra's book, Nails: The Inside Story of an Amazin' Season, but instead could be a look at what happened to him after he retired from baseball in 1996. Dykstra opened up a number of businesses and entered into many ventures, including a car wash and a jet charter company, leading to multiple investigations into his financial empire. He declared bankruptcy in 2009 and was living out of his car at one point, also selling off his World Series ring. In 2012 he pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud, money laundering, and concealment of assets. 

Dykstra said he wants Matt Damon or Mark Wahlberg to portray him in the film, which are pretty good suggestions actually. Hancock is coming off Disney's Saving Mr. Banks, and this marks a return to baseball movies for him as he directed Dennis Quaid in 2002's The Rookie. [Variety]

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Kevin Costner May Direct Disney's 'Electric Boy Genius'

As Kevin Costner has suddenly become a regular presence on the big screen again, admittedly with mixed results thanks to the lackluster performances of Three Days to Kill, Draft Day and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, it only makes sense he'd begin to look at his directorial options. Costner hasn't stepped behind the camera since 2003's western, Open Range, but now he's reportedly circling Disney's long-developing inspirational drama, Electric Boy Genius.

Sitting in development limbo for some time, the last update on it came in 2010 when John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) came aboard to direct the film, based on a 2002 GQ article about teenaged electrical engineering wiz, Ryan Patterson. Patterson had been experimenting with electricity while still in diapers, and picked up the skills he needed by watching his father do wiring work. By the time he was  17, Patterson was already making advanced technological advancements and developing innovations. Doug Wright wrote the most recent draft of the script.

Costner has only directed three films, the biggest of which was Dancing with Wolves, followed by the regrettable post-apocalyptic thriller, The Postman. If this goes through and Costner signs on, maybe we'll see his career start to resemble Clint Eastwood's.  [Tracking Board]

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John Lee Hancock Rewriting 'The Magnificent Seven' as Tom Cruise Exits

Not that there was a lot of positive buzz swirling around MGM's planned remake of Western classic, The Magnificent Seven, but at least when development began in 2012 Tom Cruise was involved. Now that's no longer the case as The Wrap reports Cruise has exited the picture, just as Saving Mr. Banks director John Lee Hancock has come on to give it a rewrite.

Considering the busy slate ahead of Cruise this doesn't come as a total surprise. He's currently hard at work on Mission: Impossible 5 and will jump into a Jack Reacher sequel once that's done. Hancock will be taking over for writer Nic Pizzolatto (HBO's True Detective) who wrote the initial draft based on the 1960 film starring Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and more as a group of hired gunmen protecting a village from outlaws. It was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

There's still no director officially on board but Hancock has experience in the genre, directing 2004's big budget flop, The Alamo.

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Review: 'Saving Mr. Banks' Starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks

This time of year Hollywood should just take out a giant full page ad that reads: "Make a movie about us and we will love you forever!” Hollywood loves movies about making movies, and from the moment Disney revealed the plot of Saving Mr. Banks, which follows the contentious battle to complete 1964's beloved classic Mary Poppins, it's been pegged as a future Oscar contender. Maybe that will still be the case, maybe not, but for all the talent and Disney cozying up for some Oscar gold, the film simply isn't very good and won't make you care a whit about Mary Poppins or its author, P.L. Travers

Unfortunately the entire point of the film is to make us care about Travers (Emma Thompson), the Australian author who famously fought Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) for years before she'd allow him to adapt the first of her Mary Poppins novels. When the movie begins she's in dire financial straits and has started to listen to Disney's offers, albeit reluctantly. She has no desire of selling the rights to Mary Poppins, and at first we're expected to believe it's just another case of a creator protecting the integrity of their work. When she arrives in Los Angeles to negotiate, it might as well be a hostage negotiation for all the enthusiasm she displays. Not only is she snotty and rude to Disney, who is merely hoping to fulfill a promise he made to his daughter, but she's a complete snot to the screen and song writers (Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak). She's even dismissive of her well-meaning driver (Paul Giamatti), an everyman always "keeping on the sunny side of life" so to speak.

Disney does what nobody else can understand, allowing her to take part in the movie's production even though she hasn't signed a deal. She takes every opportunity to point out how repulsive she finds the entire ordeal, and arguments over every bit of minutiae she can find play out ad nauseum. She doesn't want any songs...or any animation...and she has a problem with the color red so there can't be any of that. The entire purpose of the film up to this point seems to be showing just how ugly Travers was, and well, they succeeded because she's absolutely awful.

The trouble is that the ultimate goal is to make us sympathize with her, and to uncover the reasons she's holding on to Mary Poppins so tightly. Thus a parallel narrative unfolds through flashback, chronicling her childhood in Australia where she worships her fun-loving, frolicking drunk of a father (Colin Farrell, never been better really). Directed lovingly by John Lee Hancock, these scenes are at first a welcome, very Disney-esque look at the influence Travers' imaginative father had on the surreal world she created around Mary Poppins, and explains in some way why she considers the work so sacred. However, they quickly become a distraction as her father's personal demons begin to take over, dampening the film's jovial spirit without shedding much light on Travers' unforgivable attitude as an adult. The script by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith heaps on one mawkish beat after another before but never quite makes the connection between the hopeful young Travers and the older one who is busy scolding everybody.

Since this is a Disney movie and Hanks is playing Walt Disney, one can be forgiven for assuming his portrayal would be a little thin. But Hanks is too good for that, and with a script that treats Disney far better than it does Travers, we're allowed to see him as both kind-hearted and a shrewd businessman. His outgoing, wizened Jiminy Cricket personality makes for a soothing, calming presence and, although he's very much a supporting character, the film loses much of its warmth when he's away. That's because the film gets mighty chilly every time Thompson is on screen. They're much better together when they can bicker and quarrel like an old married couple from two vastly different worlds. Thompson, whose Nanny McPhee movies were clearly inspired by Travers, gives the role everything she's got but is consistently let down by the script. She's been a hater the entire movie and her transformation into a kinder, gentler Travers never feels earned.

The film bends over backwards for a happy-ish ending; giving the impression Travers was mostly pleased with Disney's completed work. She really wasn't, but to say otherwise would be to throw a wet blanket over everything. Better a happy ending than the truth, right? While Saving Mr. Banks may be must-see viewing for Mary Poppins fans, others won't find anything magical about it.

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Tom Hanks Is Walt Disney In First Trailer for 'Saving Mr. Banks'

Disney pretty much has all of its Oscar bases covered with Saving Mr. Banks. Not only is the story interesting and relevant to the Mouse House, following Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers and her rocky relationship with Walt Disney, but it also has quite an assemblage of talent in front of and behind the camera. Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Paul Giamatti, Colin Farrell, Jason Schwartzman, and Ruth Wilson are all on board, with The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock at the helm. It all amounts to a film that seems ready-made for a Best Picture nomination, but is it perhaps a little too safe and comfortable?

After the first image dropped a couple of day ago, we know have the trailer for Saving Mr. Banks, and while it's definitely a charmer, it's also more than a little sappy and manufactured. Hanks plays the legendary Mouse House founder, who fought with Travers to let his studio adapt Mary Poppins to the big screen, but she's reluctant because the character of Mr. Banks is based on her own father, and she considers the story extremely special. Speaking of special, the trailer goes a little overboard in trying to get across just how important Walt Disney was, but there's no denying Hanks looks great in the role, and he has strong chemistry with Thompson.

The last film similar to this was 2004's J.M. Barrie biopic, Finding Neverland, which was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor for Johnny Depp. Could Saving Mr. Banks replicate that success? We'll find out when it opens on December 13th.

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Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson to star in the making of 'Mary Poppins' film, 'Saving Mr. Banks'

After a fierce bidding war, Walt Disney, who already own much of the rights to P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins character, picked up the rights to Saving Mr. Banks, a film based on the Black List script by Kelly Marcel. Not a remake or sequel to the classic 1964 movie, Marcel's story is a biopic detailing Travers' reluctance to part with the film rights to the late Walt Disney. As we all know, Travers eventually caved, but she hated the movie and regretted the decision ever since, which effected her relationship with Disney ever since.

Variety reports that Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson are in talks for the two leads, making this instantly a potential Oscar contender with these veteran actors attached. Unbelievably, this would be the first time Hanks and Thompson have worked together, which should be worth the price of admission alone. John Lee Hancock(The Blind Side) will direct.

The production of the Mary Poppins film is an interesting one mainly because of how Travers was treated during the whole process. She despised the animated sequences used, and never allowed another Poppins film to be made by Disney, even though they often tried to change her mind. She wasn't even invited to the movie's premier, although she did attend after personally requesting a ticket. Travers ultimately wrote eight books about the magical nanny, the last one published in 1988.

I'm curious to see how Disney treats Travers in the film, since she had such a contentious past with the studio. When filming could begin is unclear, as Hanks still has to shoot Captain Phillips for Paul Greengrass first.

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Sure Shots: Dracula; 'Mary Poppins'; Lea Seydoux

* Somebody has sucked dry all the creative juices running through Hollywood. With a handful of Dracula projects already in development, Sony Pictures is looking to add one more, only they hope to turn theirs into a period piece franchise. Written by Jason Keller(Mirror Mirror), his take will focus on the the vampire's origin story, but other details remain scarce. With Gary Shore's Dracula Year Zero already out there, this makes two origin stories competing to see which gets completed first. Do I get a vote? Hopefully neither will see the light of day. Vampire movies have been overused to the point where they need to be buried for at least a decade. [Deadline]

* The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock is in early talks to direct Saving Mr. Banks, based on the true story behind Disney's attempts to get author P.L. Travers to sell them the film rights to her 1934 novel, Mary Poppins. Written by Kelly Marcel, with the screenplay appearing on the Black List of the best unproduced screenplays, the story will detail Travers' deeply personal connection to the story of the mystical nanny, leading to her resistance in selling the rights. Travers is a fascinating figure, so I'm pretty excited about this one, especially since it's being housed by Walt Disney who already own many of the Mary Poppins rights. Travers(real name Helen Goff) idolized Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, and his influence is felt on the Poppins story. [Deadline]

* Last year proved to be huge for rising French actress, Lea Seydoux. Appearing in two of 2011's most acclaimed films of wildly different genres, Midnight in Paris and Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol, Seydoux is looking like a star to keep a close eye on. Variety reports she has now joined the cast of Blue is a Hot Color, from Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche(Games of Love and Chance) and starring Adele Exarchopoulos, the story follows a young woman who unexpectedly falls in love with another female and must face the judgement of her friends of family. Seydoux has two films due out later this year, and recently signed on to star opposite Vincent Cassell in a new version of Beauty and the Beast.

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