Spielberg circles gritty Moses biopic - and more juicy film news

TOP MOVIE NEWS: THURSDAY 26 JANUARY

Spielberg circles gritty Moses biopic, Chris O’Dowd doesn’t want Bridesmaids sequel, The Saint set for a return

He’s one of the most bankable filmmakers in Hollywood, which is perhaps why Warner Bros. have their heart set on tempting War Horse director Steven Spielberg back behind the camera for a project of Biblical proportions.

With a working title of Gods And Kings the studio envision their latest picture as “a movie like a Braveheart-ish version of the Moses story,” according to an insider quoted in US trade magazine Deadline.

Reports suggest that the movie will not be a remake of The Ten Commandments, the 1956 version of the Old Testament story starring Charlton Heston, but will instead be an entirely new beast. Apparently studio bosses want Spielberg to bring a bit of the gritty reality of Saving Private Ryan to the Biblical epic, transforming the Old Testament into a new battleground, the insider said: ”There have been glossy versions of the Moses story but this would be a real warrior story.”

The money men have been courting Spielberg since September and whilst he is reported to be keen on the project, the problem lies in finding a gap in a choc-a-bloc schedule that includes post-production work on Lincoln and filming on his next project Robopocalypse. Nevertheless studio bosses are confident that they will get the director to sign on the dotted line, perhaps by the end of the month with a few to kicking things off in 2013.

Chris O’Dowd doesn’t want Bridesmaids sequel

Talk of a sequel to 2011’s surprise smash hit Bridesmaids was inevitable considering the raucous rom-com’s box office haul; but recent weeks has seen many stars distance themselves from the project. The latest of those is The IT Crowd star Chris O’Dowd who’s admitted in a recent interview with the BBC that he doesn’t think a Bridesmaids sequel is a good idea.

O’Dowd, who played Office Nathan Rhodes in the hit comedy, said in a recent interview that he hadn’t heard anything about a sequel. "I've seen a lot of the guys since, but I honestly haven't heard anything about it," he said. "I personally think it might be best to leave it."O'Dowd also revealed that he’s been swamped with offers since he appeared in the movie, but that he’s been disappointed by the calibre of some of the scripts that have been sent his way: "The only little problem is that it led to an awful lot of offers just to do rom-coms, none of which were as good as Bridesmaids," he said. "So I was conscious of trying to veer away from that, the easy transition of taking a bigger part in a big rom-com."

The Saint set for a return

The iconic spy, once played by Roger Moore, was last seen on the silver screen in a less than impressive Val Kilmer outing back in 1997. But the halo-topped hero could be set to return to cinemas after RKO Pictures hired Eagle Eye scribe Travis Wright to pen a new picture.

A debonair agent with a knack for taking on corrupt people of power, The Saint started life in 1928 and graduated to screens soon after. Now it seems that RKO are intent on returning the character, who they hold the rights for, to the limelight with talk of a trilogy being planned alongside producer Rick Porras who’s best known for his work on The Lord Of The Rings films.