Tower Heist

EXCLUSIVE: Relativity Media has set The Hunger Games‘ Liam Hemsworth to star in Aurora Rising. Scripted by A Man Apart‘s Christian Gudegast, the film is produced by Emjag Productions’ Alexandra Milchan and Film 360’s Scott Lambert and Guymon Casady along with Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh. Antonio Moura Santos Jr. will executive produce. Hemsworth will play a Southern California surfer turned military fighter pilot who, after acing a complicated and messy first combat mission, gets recruited to be part of an elite team to test the next generation of aircraft. This happens just as an international conflict begins to escalate. ROAR, WME and Morris And Yorn rep Hemsworth. Gudegast is repped by WME and 360 Management. This is his second project with Relativity where he will also script and direct the bank heist drama Den Of Thieves. Relativity’s Jason Barhydt will oversee the project for the studio. On August 16, Relativity releases the corporate espionage thriller Paranoia, the Luc Besson action film Malavita on September 20 with Robert De Niro with EuropaCorp, Scott Cooper’s Out Of The Furnace on October 4, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-directed Don Jon on October 18, and the Jimmy Hayward-directed Free Birds on November 1. Relativity is in production on the Kevin Costner-starrer Three Days To Kill with Europacorp.

To be certain, James Franco has never been lacking in ambition. From the meta quasi-doc "Francophrenia (Or Don't Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is)" to the Hart Crane biopic "The Broken Tower" to the kinky "Interior. Leather Bar." to the primate co-starring "The Ape," Franco has leapt into filmmaking taking on challenges and narrative most other filmmakers wouldn't dare to attempt. And while there is something to admire in the ambition of the 35 year-old actor/writer/director's latest venture, "As I Lay Dying," it never amounts to much more than a curiosity. Requiring a decent knowledge of the source material (or at least a quick skim of the Wikipedia page) to fully grasp, Franco's film almost plays out as William Faulkner's "Oregon Trail." The basic premise is pretty straightforward: following the death of matriarch Addie, the Bundren family head to Jefferson, Mississippi to lay her to rest. And along the way, we'll see various family secrets and more come to the surface. But journey...