The Random: Disney’s Jungle Cruise, Jake Gyllenhaal to play Leonard Bernstein, Dora the Explorer movie and more
– Isabela Moner (Transformers: The Last Knight) will be playing Dora the Explorer in a live-action movie. Nick Stoller (The Muppets, Neighbors) wrote the live-action feature, which James Bobin will direct. The movie will follow a teenage Dora — accompanied by her best friend, Boots the monkey, and her cousin Diego — on an adventure. The project hails from Paramount’s new Paramount Players division.
– Jake Gyllenhaal is set to produce and star as Leonard Bernstein in The American, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing and producing. Michael Mitnick adapted the script from the Humphrey Burton biography Leonard Bernstein. Structured in five movements, like a symphony, The American follows Bernstein from conducting the New York Philharmonic at the age of 25 and through a meteoric rise to fame, all while struggling both personally and publicly to be everything that everyone expected him to be, most of all himself – Deadline
– Alexandre Aja (Piranha 3D, Horns) is working on Crawl which Paramount has just picked up. Sam Raimi is producing with Craig Flores – Crawl centers on a young woman who, while struggling to save her father during a Category 5 hurricane, finds herself trapped inside a flooding house and fighting for her life against Florida’s most savage and feared predators – Aja wrote the most recent draft of the script, which was initially penned as a spec by Shawn and Michael Rasmussen – THR
– BBC One has ordered an eight-episode second season of Russian crime drama McMafia.
– Champion, the Korean arm-wrestling comedy film from Warner Bros., made lots of deals ahead of its market debut in Cannes. Well Go USA will handle distribution for North America, Seoul-based sales banner Finecut said on Thursday. The first feature from director Kim Yong-wan, Champion stars Don Lee (a.k.a. Ma Dong-seok), a popular supporting actor from 2016’s international box-office smash Train to Busan. Champion follows a Korean adoptee working as a bouncer at a Los Angeles nightclub. His knack for arm-wrestling attracts the attention of a sports agent in Korea, where he embarks on a search for his birth family. – THR
– Pasadena broadcast legends Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan, celebrated around the world for their coverage of the annual Rose Parade, are heading across the pond to host the Royal Wedding. Produced by Funny Or Die, THE ROYAL WEDDING LIVE WITH CORD AND TISH! airs LIVE, exclusively on HBO, SATURDAY, MAY 19 at 7:30 a.m. (ET)/4:30 a.m. (PT), with a prime-time replay later that evening at 9:45 p.m. (ET/PT).
– Paul Giamatti, who worked with Dwayne Johnson in the earthquake movie San Andreas, is reteaming with the box-office star for Disney’s Jungle Cruise. Johnson will play a boat captain who takes a sister (Emily Blunt) and her brother (Jack Whitehall) on a mission to find a tree believed to possess healing powers. Wild animals and a competing German expedition figure into the proceedings. Giamatti will play a crusty harbormaster. Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows) is directing – THR
– Season Two of Amazon Prime Original Goliath Premieres on June 15 on Prime Video. Golden Globe winner Billy Bob Thornton will be joined by new series regulars Mark Duplass, Morris Chestnut and Ana De La Reguera in brand-new eight-episode season launching in more than 200 countries and territories.
– The CW’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch show is officially called Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
It’s official! “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is our title! Something wicked this way comes…@kiernanshipka #incredible #netflixsabrina pic.twitter.com/OUdF9xMM0N
— RobertoAguirreSacasa (@WriterRAS) May 2, 2018
– Harris Dickinson is joining Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent sequel. Dickinson joins fellow franchise newcomers Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Skrein. Elle Fanning is set to return for the follow-up to the 2014 Disney film. Dickinson will be playing the prince in the new pic, replacing Brenton Thwaites, who played the role in the original – THR
– Today show host Kathie Lee Gifford is starring alongside Craig Ferguson in Love Me To Death, a feature Gifford wrote and will film next month in Scotland. Adriana Trigiani is on board to direct. It follows Annabelle (Gifford), a lonely widow who plans a trip around the world, with her husband’s ashes in tow, to visit the places they loved in the movies. When she arrives at the Inn in Loch Lomond, run by a curmudgeonly Scotsman (Ferguson), the first stop on the journey changes her life forever, as a family secret is revealed, one wedding is derailed, another is planned, and two unlikely people get a second chance at love – Deadline
– Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots have boarded the Irish sci-fi thriller Vivarium from director Lorcan Finnegan (Without Name). Eisenberg and Poots will play a couple who follow a mysterious real estate agent to a new housing development to find the perfect starter home, only to become trapped in a maze of identical homes and forced to raise an otherworldly child – THR