George Clooney Sexting!

The Venice Film Festival will open on August 31st, with new the George Clooney directed drama, The Ides of March.

Adapted from the Beau Willimon play Farragut North, Ides stars Clooney as a presidential candidate, Ryan Gosling as a head of media and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a campaign manager along with Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood starring.

Taking place during the Ohio primary for the Democratic nomination, the film is extremely topical, given the recent resignation of Congressman Anthony Weiner for sending lewd photos of himself to online "sexting" partners. Similarly, The Ides of March involves the scandalous activities of a rising political figure.

Hollywoodteur G. Clooney has had several of his films presented at the star studded Venice Film Festival. His VFF repertorie includes Intolerable Cruelty, The Man Who Stared at Goats, and the Steven Soderbergh directed Out of Sight. The Ides of March is being distributed by Sony Pictures and is currently slated for a fall release.

Tree of Life for Pitt & Penn

Tree of Life is sublime. It is the film any and every studied filmmaker who laud cinema and cinema theory would want to make. It is smart, academic, personal and artsy filmmaking can be without being at all amateur, nor alienating. In fact, you could hear a pin drop in the theater. The audience was completely engaged and stimulated with what was happening on the screen. Tree wants and acts like it wants to be a coming of age movie; however, it is more about the genesis of coming to be and existing.

Written and directed by Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain and chronicles life through the eyes of a 1950's Texas family with sci-fi features, surrealist themes and impressionistic imagery through space, oceanic waves and human anatomy. Tree easily conjures up comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey; however, this would simply be homage as Tree is so strikingly original in glueing all of the elements of the narrative together like you have never seen before.Premiering in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, The Tree of Life won the celebrated Palme d'Or and has since garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews for its technical and artistic merits, yet also received polarizing reactions in response to Malick's directorial style, in particular, film's fragmented and non-linear narrative.

Finally a movie to truly get excited about and inspired by at the cinema. Hollywoodteurs take note!

Tell No One

Warner Bros and Universal Pictures have optioned rights to Harlan Coben’s thriller Tell No One. One of the biggest-selling mystery writers in America, Coben has yet to see one of his books given the Hollywoodteur treatment. That was until now, Ben Affleck is attached to direct the screenplay written by Chris Terrio. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall are producing Harlan first Hollywood film. The studios will co-develop the picture, with Warner Bros releasing domestically and Universal Pictures International launching it overseas. The deal also involves Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp, as the project is a loose remake of the French film adaptation of Coben’s book, which was directed by Guillaume Canet with EuropaCorp ties.

Coben originally set up his book at Sony Pictures in 2002. The studio hired Star Trek scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, however, it never came together and Sony let it go. Meanwhile in France, Canet then got involved, figured out how to make the premise work, set it up at EuropaCorp and turned it into French film. The plot involves a pediatrician who is out one night with his wife when she suddenly vanishes and he is severely beaten. When she turns up murdered, he is prime suspect. Canet managed to make all of that work, while Hollywoodteurs spent years unable to come up with a script to greenlight.

Hoping for yet another franchise, other Coben's other books have been bought by stealthy Hollywoodteurs seeking a R.O.I.

Madonna's Directorial Debut Lands a Distributor

W.E., the feature film directorial debut from multi-hyphenate Madonna has been acquired by The Weinstein Company (TWC) for U.S. distribution. A romantic drama co-written by Madonna and Alek Keshishian, W.E. was produced by Madonna and Kris Thykier and executive produced by Scott Franklin (Black Swan).

Starring Abbie Cornish (Limitless) and Oscar Isaac (Drive), W.E. spans six decades beginning in 1998 with the Sothesby auction of the late Duke and Duchess of Windsor's estate as a device to flash back and forth between pre World War II England and contemporary New York City.

W.E. is a contemporary love story juxtaposed that of King Edward VIII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson. In Interview magazine, Madonna said, "W.E. was fantastic and complicated. It is really about a girl who has this obsession and is going to the auctions." Coming soon.

As everything with Madonna, she reduces the potential sublime to accessibly interesting and pushes only the buttons to get the results she desires.

$43 Million Act of Valour

Hollywoodteurs stirkes again. This time in what will shape up to be the biggest amount paid for a finished film with an unknown cast. Relativity Media pays a reported $13 million minimum guarantee with a $30 million P&A commitment for Act of Valour from Ryan Kavanaugh's company.

Valour is the first original movie of many to come about Navy SEALs since the group killed Osama Bin Laden. Others SEAL films are in various stages of production including a Kathryn Bigelow directed drama about the hunt for Bin Laden which Sony Pictures has acquired. Scripted by former Navy SEAL, Kurt Johnstad (300) and directed by the Bandito Brothers' Mike "Mouse" McCoy and Scott Waugh, Act of Valour, is a mission movie involving Navy SEALs with half dozen lead roles played by active duty Navy SEALs and the United States military was behind the production providing an extra layer of authenticity.

After screenings over the past few weeks at the Arclight and in New York, distributors began bidding. The auction, held by WME Global's Liesl Copland and Graham Taylor, heated up with Dark Castle, Alcon, Lionsgate, Film District all in the mix with comparable bids. However, the sellers were intrigued with the Hollywoodteur aggressiveness of Relativity's Ryan Kavanaugh, Tucker Tooley, and Terry Curtin's comprehensive marketing campaign.

Act of Valour was given the greenlight and executive produced by Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull. Word is, Valour is very patriotic, heavy on action and will play in wide release - 3000+ screens, either at Veterans Day weekend in November or a Presidents Day release in February 2012.

A Woody In Paris

Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams, is doing so well that Sony Pictures Classics is moving the film into a total of 944 theaters this weekend. Can you believe this is the widest play ever for an Allen pic after Anything Else in 2003? Truth is, I don't even recall Anything Else, which opened in 1,033 locations to begin with, and quickly vacated theaters cuming $3.2 million domestically.

Making its world premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Midnight in Paris opened in only six theaters on May 20th with one of the best location averages of all times with $99,834 at the domestic box office. The following weekend, Midnight expanded into 58 theaters, and then into 147 locations last weekend.

Midnight in Paris has done stellar business all along the way, cuming $7.4 million to date and landing on the top 10 chart for the past three weekends, despite its limited release. Sony Classics’ Tom Bernard and Michael Barker said they didn’t intend to expand nationwide until June 24th, but once they counted the gross receipts they quipped, "the film is working with audiences," and their plans quickly changed.

“Not only is this one of Woody Allen’s best films, it has this magical element which lends itself to be the alternative entertainment to the big studio picture. It has tremendous crossover potential,” Barker said. In Midnight in Paris, Wilson’s character discovers an alternate reality while in Paris with his wife. Wilson plays the sort of “everyman” character that a moviegoers tend to see in more mainstream films, versus in arthouse titles or in an Allen film. Critics across the country, and not just in New York have given Midnight in Paris great reviews.

Midnight in Paris has done great business in more commercial multiplexes and has even broken a number of house records in arthouse theaters, including the Landmark in Los Angeles. Allen’s top grossing film in recent years was Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which earned $23.2 million domestically. At its widest point, the film played in 726 theaters. Match Point grossed $23.2 million, and, at its widest, was in 512 theaters.

Get Paris on your weekend calendar.

From Black Swan to Noah's Ark

HOT STREET: Hot from Hollywodteur Boulevard is 2011 Best Director nominate Darren Aronofsky is offering the studios a $130 package for his very own edgy re-telling of the Noah's Ark story.

Aronofsky wrote a script that is currently in rewrites with John Logan. New Regency is eyeing a co-financing role with suitors like Paramount, Fox and Summit all considering stepping up for the other half.

What is being described as a big fantasy epic, Noah, is an opportunity for Aronofsky to create his very own big Hollywood production - and world - after dropping out of The Wolverine. Now, Aronofsky is eager to make his next film a bonafide Hollywoodteur spectacle. And with more heat on him than ever, after directing the hugely profitable Black Swan, which grossed $315 million worldwide on a $12 million budget, his move towards the Ark will certainly have Hollywoodteur studio executives lining up in to get on-broad, offering tons of cash to flush out Aronosky's creativity, personal ambitions and vision.

Aronofsky recently flirted with Exodus, the 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment produced telling of the story of Moses, unfolding Moses' defiance of the Pharoah and his subsequent delivery of the Hebrews from enslavement. Nobody has tried to tell the Noah's Ark story in as ambitious a manner as Aronofsky intends.

Tinsletown waits to see who will step up to assist Aronofsky cash in on Noah's Ark.