The Morning Roundup: B.O. Report, Vin Diesel in XXX, Eva Longoria an Avenger

Written by: Phoebe Raven, CC2K Staff Writer

This morning we have the usual Box Office report, award news from several festivals, Vin Diesel back in XXX, Eva Longoria as an Avenger and opportunities for young filmmakers.

Before dispersing the obvious news, let us take a minute to remember David Foster Wallace, who died Sunday under tragic circumstances. Take the time to read the excellent DFW coverage on this page: an excellent obit, a guide to his work and the Official DFW thread in our forums.
The CC2K universe has been altered, as many of us CC2Kers had a soft spot for this author.

Now, sadly, on to business as usual…

The Box Office was dominated this weekend by two brothers by the name of Coen. Burn After Reading opened to $19.4 million, giving the siblings and Focus Features their biggest opening gross ever.
Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, for the first time starring a white lead in a Perry movie, came in second.
Jon Avnet’s Al Pacino-Robert De Niro cop drama Righteous Kill grossed an estimated $16.5 million and placed No. 3.

Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures both sent their last film into the running this weekend, a result of the Time Warner Company reorganizing New Line. Picturehouse's The Women debuted to an estimated $10 million. which, ironically, it’s the best opening ever for Picturehouse, and the widest.
Warner Independent says goodbye with Towelhead, about an Arab-American girl navigating adolescence, nabbing the best per-location average of the weekend.

The 34th Deauville Festival of American Film handed out awards this Sunday (in case you don't know, Deauville is in France) and top honors went to Tom McCarthy's film The Visitor. Lance Hammer's Ballast was awarded both the jury prize and the Cartier Revelation prize, which recognizes innovative film making. Overall the films in the lineup focused on social and political drama and had a very sombre tone.

And more awards were handed out at the 13th annual Angelus Student Film Fest. And German-language cinema was victorious yet again, when Reto Caffi (he is Swiss and quite delicious) took home the Patrick Peyton award for excellence in film making and a cash prize of $10,000 for his film On the Line. It follows a security guard of a department store, who has to deal with his guilty conscience after not helping a victim on the subway.
The film also won Caffi this year's "Honorary Foreign Film" Student Academy Award in June by The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.

Let's look at pre-production heaven/hell:

Apparently, a third xXx movie is in the works, and Ice Cube has been ice-cubed. Instead, Vin Diesel is in talks to return to the role that landed him on the C-list in the first place. He will re-team with the franchise's original director Rob Cohen to create XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. If this isn't bad news, then I don't know what is. Oh, wait, I do, read on…

Eva Longoria-Parker may become an Avenger . She was photographed coming out of the Marvel Studios with a full reading package under her arm. the role of Janet Van Dyne aka Wasp seems to be her aim. And since Desperate Housewives wraps just in time for production of the movie (in 2011), this could actually be happening. Won't we have tired of her by then? Picture courtesy of Flawed Hollywood.

If you are an aspiring filmmaker, consider shooting your movie in Germany. Why? Well, we have delicious beer, you are allowed to drink it at the age of 18, oh, and the German government will throw money at you for making your movie here. And not just when you are a low-level director just starting out. Even names like Roman Polanski and Quentin Tarantino get funding from the German government .
Polanski’s Ghost, an adaptation of the Robert Harris novel starring Pierce Brosnan and Nicolas Cage, will start production in January in Berlin as well as nearby Studio Babelsberg and on the North Sea island of Sylt (where all the posh people vacation, sorta the German Hamptons).
Tarantino's controversial Inglorious Bastards will also receive dough out of the $85 million pot established by the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) last year.

There's a new Promised Land in the film business, people!