Film News

Local Scribes Happily Sell Out

In a nice coup for a trio of mostly local writers, Warner Bros. has purchased the comedy script Bobbie Sue in a deal made through De Line Pictures. Owen Egerton, formerly of Mr. Sinus, and fellow scribes Russell Sharman, a University of Texas film grad (and current anthropology prof at Brooklyn College), and Chris Mass, co-writer and co-star of Chalk, had been writing together for a year and a half before the breakthrough, Egerton says. Their story is about an ambulance-chasing lawyer defending a powerful client sued for sexual discrimination. "We are very very pleased," Egerton says. "And we didn't even have to move to L.A.!" Egerton also reports the adaptation of his first novel, Marshall Hollenzer Is Driving, by Jeffrey Travis is expected to shoot early next year with noted producer Susanne Bohnet (The Chumscrubber) on board for the project.

The Horror! The Horror!

Musician Francois Larosa has been quietly shooting the psychological thriller The Reincarnation of Jesse Belle in the Austin area as well as in Gonzales, Victoria, and Wimberley. Larosa also wrote the script, which he describes as in the vein of a Stephen King story. A making-of documentary is also being shot with plans to submit to the KLRU show Docubloggers. See the latest at Larosa's MySpace blog, www.myspace.com/francoislarosa.

And the Rest …

Look for filmmakers Richard Linklater (School of Rock) and Todd Haynes (I'm Not There) to discuss their careers and latest projects at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March. Also announced as speaking are Col Needham, founder of the now-indispensable IMDb.com, and German producer Jan Harlan, who will talk about working with his brother-in-law, Stanley Kubrick. As always, you can see the latest breaking info on the Festival at www.sxsw.com… Ran into Nacogdoches writer Joe R. Lansdale at the Texas Book Festival, and he confirmed that Ron Perlman is indeed in contention to replace Bruce Campbell in Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires, Don Coscarelli's sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep, which is based on Lansdale's short story of Elvis in a nursing home. Paul Giamatti is on board for the sequel as Col. Tom Parker… Austinite Mike Judge's King of the Hill is dead again – or is it? Canceled and revived before, the show got word from Fox execs last week that production would cease after 13 years and almost 260 episodes, Variety reports. It is the second longest-running show currently on television, right behind The Simpsons… James Fowler, production designer on Cook County, reports that the film won Best Feature Film at the Hollywood Film Festival. A story of small-town drug problems directed by David Pomes and shot in Houston and Cleveland, Texas, it premiered earlier this year at SXSW, where it earned the Audience Award in the Lone Star States category.

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