Georgia Film News

Written by Bo Shurling

Parts of the old CBGB nightclub were recently packed up in New York and sent to Savannah for the filming of the movie CBGB. Among the items sent to the Georgia coast were club founder Hilly Kristal’s desk, a section of the bar, pieces of the wall, the phone booth and, yes, an original urinal. Kristal will be played by Alan Rickman, who’ll be joined in the cast by Malin Akerman as Debbie Harry, Rupert Grint (Rickman’s Harry Potter series co-star) as Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome (who himself makes a cameo in the film), Sting’s daughter Micky Sumner as Patti Smith, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop, Johnny Galecki as Terry Ork, Ashley Greene as Kristal’s daughter Lisa, Joel David Moore as Joey Ramone, Stana Katic as Genya Ravan, Justin Bartha as Stiv Bators and Donal Logue as Kristal’s right hand man Merv Ferguson. Once filming finishes on soundstages in Georgia, the production will move to New York. Meanwhile, CBGB director Randall Miller has postponed production on his Dennis Wilson biopic The Drummer (which was also slated to film partially in Savannah) until fall or even next year, and reports are that Aaron Eckhart has dropped out of the title role. No telling if Savannah will still be a shooting location whenever work on The Drummer finally commences. A few local musicians have managed to use their talents to land work as extras in scenes in the June Carter Cash biopic Ring of Fire that filmed in Atlanta last month. Leah Calvert of bluegrassers The Dappled Grays landed a bit part as June’s daughter-in-law Laura (Weber) Cash, and shot some scenes playing the fiddle (or at least miming it). Decatur-based singer-songwriter Blake Guthrie, meanwhile, got a small, non-speaking role as the guitarist in Johnny Cash’s house band. “The weird thing is,” Guthrie posted on his Facebook page, “I was watching Walk the Line when I got the confirmation.” Surely that proved a better experience than Guthrie’s ID Theft adventure. Similarly, Blake had been picked to play guitar in a bar band during a scene with stars Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. He spent all day on the set rehearsing Southern rock songs with a bunch of other musicians he’d just met, only to be told, just before filming, that a last-minute decision had been made to instead go with a rap song playing on a jukebox for the scene, and the band had to break down and get lost. Ah, the glamorous world of moviemaking! The good news for Guthrie? “I got paid the same no matter what.” ID Theft is wrapping up production in Atlanta imminently; Ring of Fire, meanwhile, wrapped following a live concert scene at the Variety Playhouse in Little Five Points on June 28th. The Allison Anders-directed film also shot concert scenes at the Buckhead Theatre and the Tabernacle, the latter doubling as the Grand Ole Opry and the set of The Johnny Cash Show. Scheduled to air on the Lifetime TV network later this year, the movie’s cast includes Jewel as June Carter, Matt Ross as Johnny Cash, Frances Conroy as Maybelle Carter and X’s John Doe as A.P. Carter. And yet another local musician (and artist, and actor, and all-around mess of talent), Shane Morton (Gargantua, Luchagors, Silver Screen Spook Show, Zombie Apocalypse, etc.) served as art director for the pilot for a new live-action series from Williams Street Productions for Adult Swim. Wrapping on June 22nd, the show, created and directed by Dave Willis (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squidbillies) and Casper Kelly (Squidbillies, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law), the pilot has so far only been officially referred to as “Untitled Hell Project.” The makers of Catching Fire, the Hunger Games sequel, have been scouting locations in Georgia, and it looks all but certain at least part of the production will land in the Atlanta area, although no official word has been announced by the film’s studio, Lionsgate. Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody) and Erica Ash (MADtv) have signed on for Scary Movie 5, which will be filming in Georgia from September 3rd through October 18th – not July through September as reported here last month. However, Anna Farris stalkers can cancel their trips to the peach state. While doing press interviews for The Dictator, the star of the franchises' other four flicks told comingsoon.net, "No, I don't think I'm going to do it," when asked about number five. Anthony Anderson and Regina Hall are rumored to be returning as Mahalik and Brenda, their characters from previous sequels in the series. The storyline, about a dancer going berserk after getting cut from a production, makes it sound like Black Swan may get skewered. Athens native James Ponsoldt, whose most recent film Smashed was a hit at Sundance this past year and has been picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics, returns to his hometown to shoot the feature film The Spectacular Now this summer. Based on Tim Tharp’s book of the same name, the movie is about a popular and charming high school senior who lives for the moment and as a project begins to date a social outcast and realizes he has the power to permanently impact someone’s life. Brie Larson (21 Jump Street), Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, The Secret Life of An American Teenager) and Miles Teller (Footloose remake, Rabbit Hole) are set to star. After filming in Birmingham, Chattanooga and Macon, 42, the Jackie Robinson biopic starring Harrison Ford, Christopher Meloni, Alan Tudyk, John C. McGinley and Chadwick Boseman, moved filming to metro Atlanta, where the production will run until July 14th. The film Premature, with a Groundhog Day-like synopsis but with a teenaged twist, will be filming in metro Atlanta from July 11 through August 10th. Katie Findlay (The Killing), Autumn Dial (American Reunion), Jonathan Kleitman (Teen Wolf) and relative film newcomer John Karna star. The Farrelly Brothers’ planned sequel to Dumb and Dumber, the shooting of which was being considered for Georgia, is now up in the air, because star Jim Carrey has backed out of the film. Reports are that Carrey didn’t feel that New Line Cinema was fully committed to the project. Marc Cherry, creator, executive producer and writer for Desperate Housewives, is bringing production for his new series Devious Maids to Atlanta. Based on the hit Mexican telenovela Ellas son la Alegría del Hogar, it’s received a 13-episode order from Lifetime. The show “follows the lives of five maids with ambition and dreams of their own while they work for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills.” Set to star are Roselyn Sanchez, Dania Ramirez, Drew Van Acker, Mariana Klaveno, Brianna Brown, Judy Reyes, Brett Cullen, Ana Ortiz, Grant Show and Susan Lucci. The TV series Rectify, created by Oscar-winner Ray McKinnon and produced by Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad), began filming in Griffin, Georgia on June 13th.  According to Variety, this will be The Sundance Channel’s first scripted television. Sundance’s general manager, Sara Barnett, stated that with “so much interesting work being done in the scripted arena in TV we felt that the Sundance Channel should be a part of that work.” Screenwriter McKinnon’s killer script was said to have been a “huge factor for the network to take the plunge.” Rectify, for which six episodes have been ordered, follows a Georgia death row prisoner who becomes a free man after DNA evidence overturns his rape and murder conviction. The film stars Aden Young, Abigail Spencer, Lara Grace, Liana Loggins, Clayne Crawford, Roger Edwards and J.D. Evermore. The project is set to wrap in the state on August 14th. TLC’s reality series Preacher’s Wives of Atlanta began shooting eight episodes in Atlanta on June 4th and will continue through September 1st. In other uplifting TV info, Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club will shoot season ten in Atlanta from August 3rd through October 5th. Sometimes Georgia’s movie and TV biz can be a little win-some/lose-some. Revolution and The Following, the pilots for which were recently filmed in Georgia, were picked up as series by NBC and Fox, but the two series will be filmed in other states. And while Georgia’s tax incentive lured the MTV series Teen Wolf to film in Georgia, according to the Los Angeles Times, the show was recently one of the projects that won a part of California's film and TV tax credit lottery. The Wolf will move production to the west coast in the fall. Here is an update of Georgia-shot TV show premieres and movie opening dates: Tyler Perry’s latest flick Madea’s Witness Protection just opened in theaters June 29th… Meanwhile, Perry’s new TV series For Better or for Worse premieres on TBS on July 13th… The Watch, starring Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Jonah Hill, opens July 27th… The Odd Life of Timothy Green, starring Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton, is set for an August 15th theatrical release… And Lawless (formerly Wettest County), starring Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy, opens August 31st