When he’s not playing Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, Jim Parsons likes to pick out interesting projects. That’s included Broadway stints in revivals of The Normal Heart and Harvey, as well as appearing in films such as Home and Hidden Figures.
Now he’s planning to let out his inner drag queen, according to Variety. Parsons is set to star in and produce a movie version of Matthew Lopez’s play, The Legend of Georgia McBride. He will ‘play the role of Miss Tracy Mills, a veteran drag queen who coaches a broke young man in the art of performing, transforming him from a washed-up Elvis impersonator to a show-stopping drag queen.’
So far it hasn’t been announced who will play Casey, the young man who needs to channel his inner drag queen.
Lopez’s play premiered in 2014 in Denver, and has also had successful runs in both NYC and LA (and even managed to get a great treview in the New York Times, which described it as ‘stitch-in-your-side funny’). New Regency and Fox 2000 have snapped up the feature film rights, with Parson producing through his That’s Wonderful Productions company.
It’s perhaps not surprising that in the US, the movie version of Annie Barrows’ popular novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is going by the simpler title, Guernsey. However, in the UK we’re get the more verbose name for the Channel Island set film.
I don’t know whether Dwayne Johnson really wannted a role in Kong: Skull Island and didn’t get one – and so initiated his own very large gorilla movie. It seems a definite possibility, even if the gorillas here seem to have been dyeing their hair white, like the apes in Michael Crichton’s Congo!
The 1987 Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell comedy Overboard is fondly remembered by many. Now it’s getting a remake, with the main roles gender-swapped, and Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez leading the cast. It’s perhaps the biggest English-language role yet for Derbez, who’s been a major force in Mexican comedy and one of the best known actors in hispanic, Spanish-language entertainment in the US.
John Krasinski seems keen to show there’s more to him than just Jim from The Office, and that’s certainly true for his second feature as a director. He’s taken the reins of a horror/thriller for A Quiet Place, and brought Emily Blunt along for the ride.
At the moment Canada’s Eric Radford is rightly being applauded for being the first officially ‘out’ person to win a Winter Olympic Gold Medal (in the team figure skating). However, back in 1976 there was John Curry, who became European, World and Olympic champion in the same year he was outed by a German newspaper. I meant that while he may not have opted to for his sexuality to be made public, when he took home the Olympic Gold Medal, he became to first person to do so at a time it was known he was gay.
Andrew Garfield sparked a backlash (from the more easily scandalised part of the LGBT world) when he joked that he was ‘gay man right now, just without the physical act’. Quite how vociferously angry some peope were could have resulted in Garfield being a lot more guarded, but it doesn’t seem to have had that effect. Indeed, he seems to want to put things in further context.
At one point Amy Schumer was going to play a Barbie who wasn’t beautiful enough for Barbie-land. Now she’s coming at a similar theme from a different angle with I Feel Pretty.
Kids who grew up in Britain from the late 60s through the 80s (and beyond after he was periodically reintroduced) will know the Action Man, which were literally the UK version of America’s GI Joe. Now the toy line is getting its own movie, with The Muppets and Alice Through The Looking Glass helmer James Bobin set to direct.
There are still plenty of people wondering quite how they’re going to make a standalone Venom movie work, especially as while the character may be very popular in the Spider-man universe, he’s normally thought of as a villain. While the first teaser for the movie doesn’t fully explain how Tom Hardy and the alien symbiote will work together, it hints at a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde vibe.