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At Comic-Con, unless there's a comic book superhero or a teen vampire/werewolf heartthrob, your movie can get lost in the shuffle. The exception is made for a spy flick directed by the Steven Soderbergh.
Relativity Media introduced the trailer for Haywire, starring mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano. The story follows Mallory Kane (Carano), a freelance covert operative who's betrayed on a mission in Barcelona and must fight her way back to the States to protect her family and track down those who double-crossed her. The cast includes Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Michael Angarano, and Antonio Banderas.
Soderbergh Calls Matt Damon a 14-year-old girl >> Posted 07.22.11 by Chris -
The rumors about Ocean's Eleven and Erin Brockovich director Steven Soderbergh's pending retirement from movie-making accelerated last month when Matt Damon told The LA Times that Soderbergh's retirement was "getting closer" to fruition.
He wants to paint and he says he's still young enough to have another career. He's kind of exhausted with everything that interested him in terms of form. He's not interested in telling stories. Cinema interested him in terms of form and that's it. He says, "If I see another over-the-shoulder shot, I'm going to blow my brains out."
Damon added that after finishing his next movie, the thriller Contagion, that Soderbergh would direct "Liberace next summer with Michael Douglas, and then he might do one more movie after that with George [Clooney], and then after that he's retiring."
how did soderbergh respond? >> Posted 01.12.11 by Ryan -
Steven Soderbergh may still retire like he announced last summer, but he's planning on finishing several projects first. Hard at work on the revenge thriller Knockout, Soderbergh already has several directorial projects lined up post-Knockout — the Spalding Grey documentary And Everything Is Going Fine and Cleo, a musical retelling of the story of Cleopatra set in the 1920s that stars Catherine Zeta-Jones. And now comes word that he plans to add another with Contagion, an action-thriller set during a worst-case scenario of a deadly virus.
According to Deadline Hollywood, the script has already attracted a cast that includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, and Jude Law. Written by Scott Z. Burns, who wrote Soderbergh's The Informant, the script is described as a "Traffic meets Bourne," which is fitting since Burns also co-wrote The Bourne Ultimatum. The script is expected to start a bidding war among movie studios given the cast and crew it has attracted.
Soderbergh is currently shooting Knockout, which has yet to receive a release date.
Posted 02.09.10 by Ryan -
Last summer, Steven Soderbergh announced that he may be retiring from filmmaking in a few years. We can only hope that this was said out of disappointment for losing control of Moneyball and so shouldn't be taken seriously.
The next few years will tell whether Soderbergh was speaking in earnest, but in the meantime he's continuing his trend as one of the most versatile and prolific directors working today. He's already laid the foundation for the current indie movement with Sex, Lies, and Videotape. He's done major Hollywood projects like Ocean's Eleven and Erin Brockovich while simultaneously creating experimental works like Schizopolis and Bubble, which he released simultaneously in theaters and on DVD. And of course, he suffered through the six-hour biopic Che, which he cited as a brutally stressful shoot.
Now, The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the 46-year-old director shot a movie in secret while in Australia. Soderbergh spent last month with Cate Blanchett's Sydney Theater Company directing Tot Mom, his documentary-style play about the media storm surrounding a Florida girl's disappearance.
At some point, it seems Soderbergh shot a movie on-the-fly with the play's cast members. Company actor Rhys Muldoon described it as a ''pretty much improvised film." Of course, Soderbergh isn't allowed to reveal any details, which gives the project a nice, manufactured air of mystery.
In the meantime, Soderbergh already has several projects lined up for 2010, including the Spalding Grey documentary And Everything Is Going Fine, the Gina Carano vehicle Knockout, and the biopic Liberace, starring Matt Damon alongside Michael Douglas in the title role.
Posted 01.06.10 by reelz -
Yesterday afternoon, Variety reported that Matt Damon has agreed to star in Hereafter, Clint Eastwood's next production, with a script by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen). Just hours later, Empire reported that Damon had also signed on to star in Steven Soderbergh's upcoming biopic of Liberace.
Although Warner Bros. is keeping the plot of Hereafter under wraps — describing it only as akin to The Sixth Sense — Movie Line, which claims to have a version of the script, has described the plot in extensive detail. Based on that description, the movie seems less a supernatural thriller and more a tragic meditation on death. Damon's character is described as a "handsome, shy, soft-spoken" factory worker who can ... yes, indeed ... see dead people. Production on Hereafter is expected to begin this fall.
Meanwhile, Soderbergh confirmed that Damon is onboard for his next project, saying at the Deauville Film Festival that Damon has "accepted the challenge." Damon would most likely play the male lover of Liberace, the flamboyant musician whose stage and TV career spanned from the 1940s to his death in the late 1980s. The movie will apparently focus on a 1982 lawsuit, in which Damon's character revealed Liberace's homosexuality, shocking many around the world.
The untitled project already has Michael Douglas on board in the main role, and Soderbergh talked about his enthusiasm for Douglas' fit for the role.
We've already done some costume and wardrobe tests on Michael, and they're very, very, very good.... I swear to you, Michael amazed me. He crushed it.
Damon has starred in other projects by both directors. He can be seen in Soderbergh's The Informant!, now in theaters, and he is also featured in Eastwood's Invictus, which is due out in December. The latter movie stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Damon as Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa's 1995 Rugby World Cup team. It tells the story of Mandela's attempts to use the rugby event to heal his country's reputation after years of apartheid and internal struggle.
Posted 09.18.09 by reelz -
Matt Damon gained 30 pounds to play the role of infamous corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre, a top executive at agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland who helped the FBI expose price fixing at that company in the 1990s. If that doesn't sound like the setup for a successful comedy — even in the hands of director Steven Soderbergh — you could be right.
"...a groovy-looking, chuckle-baiting, fact-based movie from protean director Steven Soderbergh..."
— Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"Who said true-life crime stories have to make serious movies? Bright, breezy, and downright goofy, this superbly captures the workings of Whitacre’s highly imaginative mind and the outlandish nature of the crime."
— Mark Salisbury, Premiere
"Amusingly eccentric rather than outright funny..."
— Todd McCarthy, Variety
"A comedy about corporate fraud, malfeasance, and a mental disorder that never quite succeeds as a comedy."
— Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
"Unlike the director's [Soderbergh] usual organic efforts — in which great style never results in overstylized — The Informant! feels overamped from start to shrugging finish."
— Robert Wilonsky, Village Voice
Posted 09.17.09 by reelz