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week 41-01
ShowBiz Weekly: news from the UK & US...

British director PETER CHELSOM has confirmed the rumours that WARREN BEATTY was to blame for many of the problems associated with the critically panned comedy Town and Country. ``Warren insisted on dozens of script changes and reshoots,'' Chelsom tells the New York Daily News. ``I just can't understand why he now has to go around telling everyone that he had nothing to do with all the delays that held it up.'' Town and Country, which starred Beatty, DIANE KEATON, GOLDIE HAWN and GARRY SHANDLING, cost in the region of 65 million and has taken in about 6 million at the box office. ``Warren now wants to pretend that he was just one of the many actors following directions like everyone else,'' says Chelsom. ``It's ridiculous and insulting. Just the other day Diane Keaton took me aside and said that at least I should take comfort in the knowledge that I'd never have it that bad again.''

GUY RITCHIE's parents were shocked when he announced he was marrying MADONNA, according to Goddess, an unauthorised biography of the singer out next month. ``They always envisioned he would marry someone more proper,'' says the author, BARBARA VICTOR, who claims she had exclusive access to Madonna's family. ``They looked down on her because she is in showbusiness, was 10 years older than him and pregnant,'' she says. She also claims Madonna had had 11 abortions before she met Ritchie, including one between the births of babies Lourdes and Rocco, when she became pregnant by an Englishman.

DREW BARRYMORE, who produced and starred with CAMERON DIAZ and LUCY LIU in Charlie's Angels film, is trying to reunite the cast and crew for a sequel. ``We are working on it and a script is being written now,'' she said. ``We are very plot friendly and we don't come up with plots that will scare people. Charles Angels are positive and fun.'' Barrymore, currently starring in the true-life comedy drama Riding in Cars With Boys, believes her biggest headache will be getting everyone together again. ``Everyone's schedule is all over the place and it takes a lot of work,'' she says.

BOB HOSKINS, who has portrayed such figures as General Noriega and Joseph Stalin, is to play the Catholic leader Pope John XXIII in a big-budget TV mini-series. The British actor will begin work in Rome in January on The Good Pope, which will follow the life of the pontiff, focusing particularly on the last year of his life. The Italian star CARLO CHECCHI will play a trusted adviser to Pope John, whose Second Vatican Council, convened in 1962, has been compared with Martin Luther's Reformation in the effect it had on Christianity worldwide.

Russian actress SVETLANA MIGOUNOVA is hoping to break into Hollywood by producing and starring in a film of one of her country's most popular 20th-century novels. She has bought the screen rights to MIKHAIL BULGAKOV's The Master and the Margarita, a novel about what happens when the devil wreaks havoc in Moscow for three days during the Stalin era. The actress plans to play Margarita and her co-producer, WILLIAM PAUL BURNS, will have a leading role in the production, which is expected to cost around 50 million.

British film-maker MICHAEL RADFORD is to direct Crime of Honour, an English-language remake of the 1957 LOUIS MALLE film Elevator to the Gallows. Malle's brother, VINCENT MALLE, is co-producing the film, about an executive who murders his boss and gets stuck in the building for the night only to be arrested for a murder committed by a thief. The locale of the remake has been shifted from Paris to New York and production is expected to begin in the spring.

Less than two months after the death of singer-actress AALIYAH in an air crash, The Matrix sequels have lost another key cast member. GLORIA FOSTER, the enigmatic Oracle who guided KEANU REEVES' character in 1999's sci-fi blockbuster, has died after complications from diabetes at the age of 64. Like Aaliyah, she had filmed most of her scenes for the first sequel, Matrix Reloaded, but none for the untitled third instalment, which is being filmed immediately afterwards. Her character is said to be integral to the series and has created another huge problem for the producers, who have still not decided how to deal with the death of Aaliyah. A Warner Bros spokesman would only say: ``We don't make statements about casting with regards to this production.''

JOHNNY DEPP flew from Paris to Los Angeles at the weekend to promote his latest film, the Jack the Ripper saga From Hell. But he confessed he was anxious to return to his girlfriend VANESSA PARADIS and their two-year-old daughter as soon as possible. ``We live in a little village in the French countryside and my immediate plans are to get back to my girls,'' he said on Sunday when told the bombing attacks on Afghanistan had begun. ``It's difficult to have to sit around and talk about movies in the midst of what's happening.'' In From Hell he and ROBBIE COLTRANE play Scotland Yard police officers on the trail of the Ripper. ``Is this a movie people should go and see?'' he asked. ``I don't know. We've got to keep moving forward and movies are escapism, so if people want to go and get out of reality for a couple of hours, why not?''

BILL MURRAY was thrilled when his Rushmore director WES ANDERSON offered him a role as GWYNETH PALTROW's husband in The Royal Tenenbaums, which received its world premiere on October 5. ``I figured, `Hey, I haven't been with a hot blonde in a while','' he tells the New York Post. ``But then I read the script and discovered she locks me out of the bathroom where she's lounging naked in the tub and she sleeps with practically everybody else in the cast but me.'' The cast includes GENE HACKMAN, ANJELICA HUSTON, BEN STILLER, DANNY GLOVER and LUKE and OWEN WILSON.

As soon as she gives birth to her baby, UMA THURMAN will go through a rigorous kung-fu training course for her next film, QUENTIN TARANTINO's Kill Bill. Writer-director Tarantino plans to hire two action giants of Asian cinema, Hong Kong's YUEN WOO PING and Japan's SONNY CHIBA to choreograph the action. Thurman will play a female assassin who sets out to track down and kill the gang members who wiped out all the guests at her wedding. ``I've written this character for Uma and Yuen and Chiba and going to put her through training where she will have to learn the kung-fu animal styles,'' said Tarantino.

A scene of an explosion at Las Vegas's New York, New York hotel and casino in Ocean's Eleven is being reshot in the wake of last month's terror attacks. The computer-generated explosion is not an act of terrorism, but Oscar-winning director STEVEN SODERBERGH will replace New York, New York with a fictional casino. Ocean's Eleven, which stars GEORGE CLOONEY, JULIA ROBERTS, BRAD PITT and MATT DAMON, is a remake of the 1960 adventure which starred FRANK SINATRA and his Rat Pack. It will have its premiere in Las Vegas on December 7.

British director TONY SCOTT received no help from the CIA for his film Spy Game because it was deemed to reflect badly on the agency and its senior management. Spy Game, filmed mainly in London, stars ROBERT REDFORD as an agency operative nearing retirement who discovers that his protege, played by BRAD PITT, has been jailed in Beijing on espionage charges. ``We were eager to co-operate,'' says CHASE BRANDON, the CIA's liaison officer with Hollywood. ``But when I saw a final rewrite of the script it had taken a turn for the worse. ``It showed our senior management in an insensitive light and we just wouldn't be a part of that kind of project.'' One of the film's writers, MICHAEL BECKNER, tells the Los Angeles Times: ``It's a very accurate depiction of the way agents operated in the morally ambiguous climate of the Cold War. ``There are things in the story that might make the agency uncomfortable but in the end, it's about a sacrifice and doing the right things.''

MINNIE DRIVER is going back to work after splitting from her fiance JOSH BROLIN. Their six-month engagement began after Driver met 33-year-old Brolin on the set of the movie Slow Burn. Now the 31-year-old British actress joins COLIN FIRTH and HEATHER GRAHAM in the romantic comedy New Cardiff, which begins filming next week in Vancouver. Her role of a jilted fiancee was intended for HELENA BONHAM CARTER but the Planet of the Apes star is staying in England for her next project.

For British actress KATRIN CARTLIDGE, the thrill of working with JOHNNY DEPP in the Jack the Ripper tale From Hell was deadened by their first encounter. Cartlidge, who plays the prostitute Dark Annie Chapman, a Ripper victim, recalls: ``For my first scene with him, I'm lying dead on the ground and he's leaning down into my face to smell my breath. ``I'm thinking, `He's looking at the ugliest thing he's ever seen I have a slit throat and entrails over my shoulder and three flies are walking on my face'. This is not the way I wanted to meet Johnny Depp.''

BEN AFFLECK has lost his leading lady in the romantic drama Gigli which was due to begin filming at the end of the year. HALLE BERRY has dropped out because of her previous commitment to return as Storm in the sequel to X-Men which now begins shooting in January. In the film, to be directed by MARTIN BREST, Affleck plays an LA hitman whose latest scheme is to kidnap the retarded brother of a powerful district attorney. Once Gigli is wrapped, Affleck will move on to the family film Surviving Christmas before tackling the Marvel Comics movie Daredevil.

Now his San Francisco-based TV series Nash Bridges has finished, DON JOHNSON is selling his 6 million home in the city to move to Colorado. The four-story Tudor-style house in the Pacific Heights neighbourhood of San Francisco, has 17 rooms and spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Johnson, 51, his wife KELLEY PHLEGER and their 22-month-old daughter, Atherton Grace, will live full time in Johnson's home in Aspen, just a walk from the ski slopes.

MICHAEL CAINE is talking to MIKE MYERS about taking the role of the swinging superspy's father in the next sequel, Austin Powers 3: Goldmember. The role was originally written with SIR SEAN CONNERY in mind but the former James Bond star was not interested. Sir Michael finds himself available for the role because the film set to be his next project, Boswell for the Defence, fell through at the last minute. Myers will play Austin Powers and the title character of the villainous Goldmember, as well as Fat Bastard, a role he created in the second instalment. HEATHER GRAHAM is expected to make a brief appearance as the CIA spy Felicity Shagwell.

WOODY ALLEN and JOHN CUSACK are working together on polishing the script for Allen's next film in which they will both star. Secrecy usually surrounds Allen's projects but it is understood the film will be a comedy adventure based on the 1972 New Year's Day robbery at New York's Pierre Hotel when thieves stole 10 million dollars. ``We are putting the finishing touches to the script right now,'' Cusack tells columnist Liz Smith. ``Woody and I both intend to act in this but I don't know when we'll start.''

Meet The Parents star BEN STILLER is reviving the 1970s crime-fighting duo Starsky and Hutch for the big screen. The comic actor is to star and produce an updated version of the adventures of the two undercover cops. It is based on the US TV series which ran from 1975-79 and starred PAUL MICHAEL GLASER and DAVID SOUL as the bachelors who raced around Los Angeles in Starksy's 1974 bright red Ford Torino. Apart from Stiller no casting has yet been announced, although sources say both Glaser and Soul will be asked to make cameo appearances.

OLIVER STONE wants to make a film about terrorism, even though most producers believe the major Hollywood studios will be unwilling to finance them. ``I'd like to do a bullet of a movie about terrorism and how it works,'' said conspiracy-theorist Stone during a panel discussion at New York's Lincoln Centre. ``It could be a fascinating thriller that would really entertain people. I don't buy into this concept that all people want to see right now is comedies. ``I think we can tie movies into the September 11 attack. Let's make a big movie about terrorism and let's do a good job of it.''

Beneath the Veil, the memoir of former Channel 4 reporter SAIRA SHAH, is to be turned into a film by Miramax, which has bought the life rights to her story. Her book, based on her trips to Afghanistan to expose the Taliban's cruel treatment of women, is expected to generate the most interest at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. Shah's journey into Afghanistan revealed much of the country's poverty was caused by the policies of the fundamentalist Islamic government. The daughter of Afghan scholar Idries Shah, she journeyed to the refugee camps of Pakistan before finding brutality and bravery in Afghanistan itself.