It's a Wrap: Sunday snapshot of the week's book to movie news

Mila Jovavich and husband/Three Musketeer director, Paul W.S.Anderson at Tokyo Film Festival screening.


  The Three Musketeers has been made and remade and remade over the past hundred years. Ever since movies have been movies, filmmakers have aspired to put their own spin on this classic swashbuckling tale. Maybe it's time to just let it go already and move on. Audiences certainly seem to have! Maybe star Mila Jovavich's tweets will sway the tide over time but as of now, apathetic audiences have given The Three Musketeers a really lousy weekend box office. According to Deadline.com,  the film, which had an estimated $80 million budget, took in a mere $2.9 million at 3,017 theatres in the U.S. on Friday for an estimated $8 million weekend.

While Warner Bros seems to have tapped Ben Affleck to direct Stephen King's The Stand, Jeff Sneider of Variety notes on TWITTER that this isn't a done deal. "NO offers have been made & Affleck has a pretty full dance card." Sneider thinks IF Affleck does get on board with Warner, he'd want to star as Stu Redman as well. He did write, direct and star in The Town which took in over $90 million with a $37 million budget so he seems up to the task!  Gone Baby Gone starring baby brother Casey, with the elder Affleck adapting Dennis Lehane's novel, as well as directing, didn't do as well in the box office department BUT it was a huge critical success.

Proving once again that lousy box office doesn't have to hurt a career (One Day bombed big time) Anne Hathaway has signed on to play Fantine in Les Miserables; she joins Hugh Jackman as Valjean and Russell Crow as Javert. Tom Hooper (The Kings Speech) is set to direct. The film will be a hybrid based on both the musical and Victor Hugo's novel. The script is from William Nicholson who wrote Gladiator. The release date is a year away, December 2012 but we'll snoop around for info as we go along! And of course we'll see her first as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises opening next July!

For this week though it's all about Johnny Depp and The Rum Diary. The film opens this Friday. Not at all sure about this film! The whole tongue thing is bizarre - NOT IN THE BOOK - and Lotterman's wig played for laughs is NOT IN THE BOOK either! Well, we'll see!