Or THE DAVINCI CODE. Urgh.

Gah. If'n I were a studio head, I would have risked careericide to back a del Toro ATMOM (though the Cruise casting gives me pause.)

I take it the Phantom's career will bear a strange resemblance to Kanye's? Sheesh.

Preparation? Development? Work? Hush, you. ;)

You mispelled Oded Fehr.

A 1-percenter-psycho's name that wouldn't make the second draft of a LAW AND ORDER script. ;)

Agreed. This monster-mash narrative crowding is a major reason "Penny Dreadful" didn't quite work (well, that—and it was hard to care about anyone except Eva Green. ;)

Hee. Nope. "'We’re immediately introduced to the team . . . and they’re led by TYLER COLT. Colt
seems pretty evidently written with Tom Cruise in mind as he “flashes a
cowboy grin,” and the script informs us that “the more dangerous the
situation is, the cooler he gets.'”

Spoilers, if you would. I only saw one PD ep. Thanks!

Lord, yes! The aural equivalent to reading one of the best-ever death-rock-n-roll novels, "Fuel-Injected Dreams."

Brrrr, "Angie Baby." Creepy Stephen King-worthy action before SK broke big. And "Wildfire" is not a song you want to hear while driving alone on a winter night.

One gets the feeling David Lynch had/has this song on iPod repeat. ;)

They have spectacularly-lousy taste in men. Period.

"Has there been a reasonably accurate movie about a writer? If so, I haven't seen it.)"

Agreed—before I saw her in AHS, I thought she was gruesomely humorless and limited range-wise.

Her character was based on Kristen Chenoweth at that, so go figure…

IIRC, the official reason given for casting Hanks was that the Langdon series is so out-the-box (and potentially laugh-inducing) that TPTB thought the audience needed a down-to-earth actor to make them buy into it. Sorta like Hitchcock casting Stewart in VERTIGO.

Tim Powers hasn't beaten him to the punch on this yet? ;)

Yep. The bomb is seconds away from going off and killing thousands of papal convocation devotees massed in St. Peter's Square. McGregor is an ex-pilot who takes it three miles up in a helicopter to make the ultimate sacrifice—though he survives the resulting humongous anti-matter explosion by parachuting out. ;)

I forget who said it, but he noted Brown's books were books for people who usually hate to read