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In this image released by Universal Pictures, Vincent Cassel appears in a scene from ‘Jason Bourne.’ (AP)

Wu slams Damon casting in ‘Great Wall’

Pike, Bruhl in talks for hijacking drama ‘Entebbe’LOS ANGELES, July 31, (RTRS): Rosamund Pike, Daniel Bruhl, and Vincent Cassel are in negotiations to star in Working Title’s hijacking drama “Entebbe.”

If their deals close, Pike and Bruhl will play German terrorists in the movie, based on the 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane headed from Tel Aviv to Paris. A total of 248 hostages were held at Entebbe Airport in Ugan-da, then rescued by Israeli forces.

The plane was hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two members of the German Revolu-tionary Cells.

“RoboCop” director Jose Padilha will direct from a script by Greg Burke. He’s an executive producer of the Netfl ix series “Narcos.”

Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Liza Chasin are producing along-side Kate Solomon. Participant Me-

dia is also producing and in talks to fully fi nance.

Pike received an Academy Award nomination for best actress for 2014’s “Gone Girl.” She is cur-rently fi lming Scott Cooper’s “Hos-tiles.” Pike is represented by CAA.

Bruhl stars in the upcoming “The Zookeeper’s Wife” opposite Jessica Chastain, and is set to star in “Par-ticle” with David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, John Krasinski, and Elizabeth Debicki. He is repped by WME, Tavistock Wood, and Play-ers Agentur Management.

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Paul Dano will make his feature directorial debut with the coming-of-age drama “Wildlife” helming from a script he’s written with Zoe Kazan.

“Wildlife” based on the 1990 Richard Ford novel, is being pro-duced by Alex Saks for June Pic-

tures with Oren Moverman, Ann Ruark and Dano. Kazan is execu-tive producing.

The narrator of the book is a teen-age boy who watches his parents’ marriage start to come apart after the family moves to Montana. “In the fall of 1960, when I was 16 and my father was for a time not work-ing, my mother met a man named Warren Miller and fell in love with him”, the book begins.

Neither Dano nor Kazan are ex-pected to act in “Wildlife.” Dano’s credits include “Little Miss Sun-shine”, “There Will Be Blood”, “12 Years a Slave”, “Love & Mercy” and “Swiss Army Man.” He’s currently in production on “Okja” with “Snow-piercer” director Bong Joon-Ho.

Dano and Kazan starred in “Ruby Sparks” directed by Jonathan Day-ton and Valerie Faris from Kazan’s script.

Moverman wrote the script for “Love & Mercy.” He directed and co-wrote “The Messenger” with Alessandro Camon and won the Silver Bear for best screenplay award and the peace fi lm award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009. He’s also a producer on Richard Gere’s “Oppenheimer Strategies.”

Ruark produced “Equals” star-ring Kristen Stewart and Nicho-las Hoult, and executive produced “Love & Mercy.”

Saks launched June Pictures ear-lier this year with Andrew Duncan. It began production last month on the ensemble comedy “Fun Mom Din-ner”, starring Katie Aselton, Toni Collette, Bridget Everett and Molly Shannon, and is also in production on “The Florida Project”, written and directed Sean Baker (“Tangerine”).

June Pictures is also in post-pro-duction on drama-comedy “Dude”

written and directed by Olivia Milch, starring Lucy Hale, Kath-ryn Prescott, Alexandra Shipp and Awkwafi na; and the psychological thriller “Thoroughbred” written and directed by Cory Finley, starring Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy and the late Anton Yelchin.

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“Fresh Off the Boat” star Con-stance Wu criticized the casting of Matt Damon in “The Great Wall”, arguing that is perpetuates a stereo-type that heroes are played by white men.

“We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world”, she wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon. “They look like Malala.. Mandela. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time.”

The fi lm, from Legendary and

Universal, is set on the Great Wall of China as a group of elite warri-ors band together to keep out and defeat mythical creatures. Wu, a Taiwanese-American actress, calls Damon’s casting “hero-bias.”

“Remember it’s not about blam-ing individuals...” she wrote. “Rath-er, it’s about repeatedly pointing out the racist notion that white people are superior to and that POC need salvation from our own color via white strength.”

She also fi ghts back the idea that actors of color don’t bring in as much box offi ce revenue. “If white actors are forgiven for having a box offi ce failure once in a while, why can’t a POC sometimes have one?” she wrote. ‘And how COOL would it be if you were the movie that took the ‘risk’ to make a POC as your hero. The whole community would be celebrating!”

LOS ANGELES: Matt Damon’s “Jason Bourne” is dominating moviegoing with an estimated $61 million opening weekend at the domestic box offi ce.

That’s more than double its closest rival, raunchy comedy “Bad Moms” with about $27 million and as much as $30 million at 3,215 locations.

Universal’s fi fth fi lm in its sturdy Bourne franchise is per-forming well above forecasts with an opening day taking in about $23 million at 4,026 sites. STX’s “Bad Moms” grossed $9.6 million on Friday at 3,215 locations.

Lionsgate’s thriller “Nerve,” which opened Wednesday, took in $3.2 million on Friday at 2,538 theaters for a weekend of up to $9 million and a fi ve-day total of about $15 million.

“Jason Bourne” is Damon’s fourth fi lm as a former CIA assassin dealing with memory loss. The franchise launched with 2002’s “The Bourne Iden-tity,” followed by 2004’s “The Bourne Supremacy” and 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum.” Da-mon did not appear in 2012’s “The Bourne Legacy,” which starred Jeremy Renner.

“Jason Bourne” will post the second-best launch of the fi ve fi lms. “The Bourne Ultimatum” opened domestically with $69.3 million in 2007 on its way to a $227.4 million total.

Paul Greengrass directs “Jason Bourne,” which also stars Tommy Lee Jones, Ali-cia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, and Riz Ahmed. The action-packed fi lm, which carries a $120 million price tag, is set in Athens, Berlin, Lon-don and Las Vegas with the Vikander and Cassel characters in constant pursuit.

Should the estimates hold, “Jason Bourne” will fi nish above Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,” which opened with $55.5 mil-lion over the same weekend last year. It will easily top “The Bourne Legacy,” which debuted to $38 million in 2012.

The four Bourne fi lms have grossed a worldwide total of $1.17 billion — $638 million

domestically and $583 million internationally. Universal is releasing “Jason Bourne” in 46 international markets this weekend. The international opening weekend estimate for “Jason Bourne” would be the largest in franchise history at $49 million. Combining domestic and foreign box offi ce numbers, the fi lm’s estimated

opening weekend total is $110 million. (RTRS)

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LOS ANGELES: Fox is reboot-ing its “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” franchise with Jason Ian Drucker and Owen Asztalos on board for the fourth fi lm in the series.

David Bowers, who di-

rected “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days” has been tapped to helm the new fi lm based on Jeff Kinney’s book “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.”

Fox’s Wimpy Kid fi lms are all produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson via their Color Force production com-

pany. Based on Kinney’s book series, the three fi lms grossed a total worldwide box offi ce of $225 million with Zachary Gordon starring as the main character Greg Heffl ey.

Gordon has aged out of the part with Drucker taking over the role. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul” follows Greg Heffl ey, who goes on a

summer road trip with his fam-ily to visit an elderly relative though he’s secretly hoping to attend a gamer convention.

Drucker starred in Nickelo-deon’s series “Every Witch Way” and in the film “Barely Lethal” with Hailee Stein-feld. Asztalos appeared in Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson”. (RTRS)

Film

Variety

Film

Heady, exciting and up-to-the-minute movie

‘Jason Bourne’ more than a rerunBy Owen Gleiberman

On screen, the “Bourne” thrillers, from “The Bourne Identity” (2002) to the new “Jason

Bourne,” have always been powered by a cool contradiction. A movie about a brainwashed human-robot ex-CIA assassin — or rather, a movie in which a brainwashed human-robot ex-CIA assassin is the hero — starts off, let’s not kid ourselves, as more of a right-wing fantasy than a liberal one. That’s why Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne, to fi t the paradigm of liberal Hollywood, has to be an assassin who’s gone rogue. He’s not on the side of the sinister CIA honchos who want to assert their will in the world; he’s against them. He’s on our side. He’s up against those who destroyed his iden-tity and turned him into a jiujitsu sociopath to serve the US agenda.

That’s why, on the movies’ own terms, he’s someone to root for. But, of course, in taking that life-as-target-practice homicidal mercilessness and turning it against his former bosses, Bourne, the programmed amnesiac as-sassin, embodies the very qualities of ruthless government control. That’s the contradiction that gives the Paul Greengrass fi lms, espe-cially, their slight amoral edge, and it’s one of the keys to their excitement. (It’s not just about the rapid-fi re cut/cut/cut propulsion.) It’s that paradox that makes them cool.

Which brings us to “Jason Bourne.” The movie name-checks Edward Snowden a cou-ple of times, and that tends to be a sign that a thriller is straining for topicality — as if past-ing a reference like that onto a high-powered action movie were an automatic guarantee of relevance. But this is the rare instance where the relevance is earned. Not because “Jason Bourne” is “about” the Snowden case. But be-cause the very thing that the words “Edward

Snowden” have come to symbolize — the is-sue of government surveillance, of how much it is justifi ed (or not), of how secret it should be (or not), of whether patriotism now means protecting government secrecy or violating it — quivers through every frame of “Jason Bourne.” You might assume that the movie, being a product of liberal Hollywood (and it is), would have a straightforward take on the subject. You might assume that it would be pro-Snowden: in favor of divulging secrets, and against the growth of the American sur-veillance state. And you would not be wrong.

MysteriousYet good movies work in mysterious and

subversive ways. Just as the “Bourne” fi lms have always invited us to get in touch with our inner assassin, there’s an electrifying contradiction that snakes its way through “Jason Bourne.” To wit: Is the movie against surveillance, or is it half in awe of surveil-lance? I’d argue that the answer is both. What’s more, that answer mirrors how even some liberals may feel, deep down, about the revelations that the Snowden leaks placed on the map. For even if you think that we’re heading toward a world of too much secrecy and private-information-gathering (and for the record, that’s the view I overwhelmingly side with), the answer to that, in a digitally merged and invasive sci-fi super-world (i.e., our planet today), surely can’t be: Eliminate all surveillance! It wouldn’t be possible, it wouldn’t work, and even if we could some-how do it, other countries and forces would, of course, still be surveilling us. So even if you’re a card-carrying liberal on the subject of the NSA, few of us, perhaps, could simply be said to be “anti-surveillance.”

That’s the ambivalence that makes “Jason Bourne” such a heady, exciting, and up-to-

the-minute movie. More, perhaps, than any previous “Bourne” installment, it’s a thriller that invites us to watch the professional watchers as they survey the rogue watchers who are watching them.

What’s evolved? The even more complete way that Greengrass now portrays the sur-veillance system at work, with a seamless and omnipresent circuit of satellites linked to cameras linked to computers linked to eye-balls. In “Jason Bourne,” that system has be-come the air we breathe — a fully operational octopus state with micro-tentacles of infi nite reach. Bourne has got a relentless assassin (Vincent Cassel, wonderfully single-minded about killing) on his tail, and he’s always on the run, but it’s not like he can hide; as often as not, and more than ever before, there’s a CIA camera eye right on him.

In “Jason Bourne,” we’re immersed, in almost every scene, in a globe that’s been wired, and that affects the audience kines-thetically. For one thing, it’s thrilling to be-hold: The surveillance is so routinely there it collapses our sense of concrete space. That’s why we rarely see people in the movie trave-ling; they’re already everywhere at once. (If you think back to “The Bourne Identity” 14 years ago, that movie was so physical it now seems like a thriller set in the land of horse and buggy.) All of this provokes, in us, a moral criss-cross. Surveying the surveillance, our ethical compass says “No, no, no” but our childlike eyes say “Yes, yes, yes.”

EnticementThe seduction of seeing and hearing be-

yond walls carries an existential enticement that pushes the fi lm’s action forward. That’s what makes the new character, Alicia Vi-kander’s Heather Lee, so intriguing. At fi rst, we suspect that she’s your basic sympathetic

ingenue cyber-desk jockey — an updated equivalent of the Julia Stiles character. Ac-tually, though, she may be getting ready to take over. For a while, she seems open to Bourne, but what’s tensely compelling about Vikander’s performance is the calibrated con-sciousness with which Heather exists inside the new world of surveillance. It’s in her (ice) blood.

There’s one more place where “Jason Bourne” cuts against the grain of liberal cin-ema (which may be why a number of liberal critics haven’t liked it). The character of Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), the superstar CEO of a social-media network called Deep Dream, is presented as a new-tech guru. He gets up in front of a crowd with that slow-talking, non-blinking Tony Robbins-seminar-gone-brave-new-world omnipotence that turned Steve Jobs’ product announcements into cult events, and he’s portrayed as an engaging composite icon of hipster cha-risma. He’s the kind of generational leader the media tends to fawn over. Except that in this case, his company was secretly funded by the CIA, so that they could have a leg up on abolishing privacy through social media. It’s a biting metaphor: The Company meets the (millennial) corporation, a match — the movie says — made in Orwellian heaven. What the character of Kalloor really signifi es is the way that we have all, through the rise of social media, acquiesced in the abolition of privacy that’s the essence of the Snowden critique. The movie is saying: Maybe the gov-ernment couldn’t be doing it, at least not this effi ciently, if the gurus (and even the citizens) hadn’t gotten there fi rst.

“Jason Bourne” wears its themes lightly, and that’s the essence of its appeal. It’s a pro-pulsive Hollywood thriller, not a seminar.

Renner Vikander

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