Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Forecasts for this year’s showbizz

Last year Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Mission: Impossible 2 had you strapped in your seats at the movie theater. N’Sync’s No Strings Atttached and Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP were records you couldn’t get out of your CD player. What’ll it be this year?

Welcome to Mission: Prognostication 2001. Peruse through this two-part article on various high profile projects of the upcoming year and you’ll get a glimpse of the huge movies and music projects coming your way.

Part I: Movies

New Line studio’s $270 million trilogy Lord of the Rings promises to be a huge box office draw for the next three years, planning to open in three consecutive Christmas seasons. Fellowship of the Ring (Dec. 19) will be the first of the three movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasies starring Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler and Elijah Wood. Speaking of big-budget films, the $130 million Pearl Harbor (May 25) hopes to open the summer blockbuster season with a bang. The recreation of Dec. 7, 1941 lasted more than 40 days and reunited director Michael Bay (Armageddon) with Ben Affleck.

An all-star cast has also been lined up for the remake of Ocean’s Eleven by Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brokovich, Traffic), which stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Pitt and Roberts also costar in the romantic comedy The Mexican (March 2). Hollywood’s most bankable leading lady will also star alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones, John Cusack and Billy Crystal in American Sweethearts, a Hollywood satire about press junkets and star couplings.

Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton will star in the Barry Levinson directed Bandits (July), a heist comedy-thriller. Johnny Depp and Heather Graham are partners in crime in the street crime caper, From Hell. Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz will star in Vanilla Sky, a remake of the 1999 Spanish thriller Open Your Eyes. Further upping the star quotient, Robert DeNiro, Marlon Brando and Edward Norton will star in heist flick The Score.

Will Smith will do his best to portray Mohammed Ali in his dream project, Ali, directed by Michael Mann (The Insider). Leonardo DiCaprio will try to reignite his post-Titanic career with Gangs of New York, a late-19th century mobster drama. Heath Ledger will play a knight in the medieval jousting adventure A Knight’s Tale (June 1). Angelina Jolie will bring videogame cyber-chic Lara Croft to the big screen in Tomb Raider (June 15).

John Travolta will play a superspy in Swordfish (Summer) alongside Hugh Jackman. Brad Pitt and Robert Redford will continue the Spy Game (Fall), where Pitt plays a wrongfully imprisoned CIA agent whose superior has 24 hours to get him out of jail. Matt Damon will star in The Bourne Identity (Fall), an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum (yep, you guessed it!) spy thriller.

Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz will star in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (April), an adaptation of Louis de Berni

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