Brad Pitt is set to take on zombies in the big screen adaptation of cult apocalypse comic book World War Z.
The superstar has just been confirmed as the lead in the eagerly-awaited film, in the first big news from San Diego’s huge fantasy and sci-fi convention, Comic Con.
Pitt’s production company Plan B secured the rights to the material in 2007 after a biding war with Leonardo DiCaprio’s outfit Appian Way.
Now the comic book’s author Max Brooks has revealed that not only is the project finally moving forward but that Pitt himself will star in it.
The story chronicles a worldwide zombie outbreak through the first-hand accounts of survivors.
It will be directed by Quantum of Solace helmsman Marc Foster and is set to be one of the blockbusters of 2012, with a summer release date, Brooks told MTV.com.
Paramount studios have also optioned the movie rights to two more of his projects, The Zombie Survival Guide and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks graphic novel.
“I can’t believe how cool Paramount has been to me and these projects, and how cool Plan B has been,” Brooks said when asked for his reaction to the news.
The Bounty Hunter star Jennifer Aniston did not leave Los Angeles because she wanted to avoid her ex-husband Brad Pitt and his partner Angelina Jolie, according to reports.
A US celebrity website earlier reported that Aniston left town ahead of the premiere of Jolie’s new movie Salt because she allegedly could not deal with all the attention the couple were receiving.
But GossipCop.com has reported that the story is completely false and that the real reason the former Friends star, 41, left LA today was to travel to London to launch her new perfume Jennifer Aniston.
She will be promoting the fragrance at Harrods department store this week.
Pitt and Aniston announced they were separating in 2005, after seven years together.
Angelina Jolie has revealed her new passion – speaking Russian.
The actress had to learn the language for her upcoming movie Salt and said she found it ‘very sensual’.
She told US Weekly: “I love speaking Russian. It’s very, very hard. I find it a very interesting sound because it can be so hard and strong and also very sensual and very beautiful.
“It’s a very interesting-sounding language. It took me a long time. I just had to practice over and over and over and I was told that I was getting it wrong a bunch of times and I had to keep practising.”
Jolie – who recently revealed she would like to play Maleficient in the upcoming Tim Burton production of Sleeping Beauty – said she got help from Russian tutors while on the set of spy thriller Salt.
“They’d do it with me, spend time with me and then they’d put it on tape. So I would take it home and I would just keep trying to get it exactly right and then trying not to get so stuck on a line,” she said.
“It was interesting to see how seductive that language could become when we were doing it… that some sounds can really hinder that or some accents have a very specific feeling to them.”
Angelina Jolie has been spotted spending time with partner Brad Pitt’s mother in Venice, dispelling rumours of a rift.
Jane Pitt was seen on the balcony of Pitt’s and Jolie’s luxury apartment holding grandson Knox, while the actress held daughter Vivienne in her arms.
There had been suggestions that Jane was angry with her son following his split from wife Jennifer Anniston, and that his family did not get on with Jolie.
The Jolie-Pitt clan are in staying in the Italian city while Jolie films The Tourist with Johnny Depp.
Jennifer Aniston is not opposed to Botox down the line.
The star told UK Harper’s Bazaar: “I could do it. These lines are getting deeper every day.”
Aniston, 41, famously single and the former wife of Brad Pitt, explained the lines were not just invention.
“When I tell you what’s happened to me – these lines are just about living. Look, I eat really well and I work out, but I also indulge when I want to. I don’t starve myself in an extremist way. You’re not taking away my coffee or my dairy or my glass of wine because I’d be devastated.”
Ever frank, Aniston’s beauty advice was to “just stop eating s— every day”.
Divorced from Pitt in 2005, she continued: “The last five years have been about spring-cleaning for me. Now it’s time for my rebirth. I love trying new things. I just can’t be put in a box.”
Aniston cited her current role models as Hollywood women. “I love what Drew Barrymore is doing with directing. I love it when people are living in the now, like her. I hate it when people look back and regret what they haven’t got. That’s how I feel about my own life now.
“And my God, let’s talk about how much I love Demi Moore as well. What kind of Kool-Aid is she drinking?”
The belief that Megan Fox is the next Angelina Jolie received a lot of push from her rumoured attachment to the upcoming Lara Croft movie.
But Fox has turned the offer to play Croft in the next Tomb Raider instalment, Hollyscoop reports.
An insider said: “The offer has been on the table for Megan for a while but she’s reluctantly turned it down.
“She’s the logical choice to play Lara and she loves the character, but the comparison with Angelina is too much. It looks like the movie will now star an unknown.”
Fox, a star of the Transformers films, last year said: “The media has to package you and sell you somehow and sell their magazines so everybody has to be ‘the new’ or ‘the next’ someone or something.
“If I am not a party girl and they can’t sell me as that, and I’m not an Oscar-winning actress and they can’t sell me as that, then they have to package me somehow and for some reason, they latched on to the Angelina thing because I have a lot of tattoos.”
British actors Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell are the latest stars to sign up for Angelina Jolie’s new movie The Tourist, according to reports.
The romantic thriller is currently being filmed in Venice, Italy, where Jolie, 34, and co-star Johnny Depp, 46, have regularly been spotted shooting scenes for the flick.
The movie sees Jolie take on the role of an Interpol officer, who crosses paths with Depp, who plays an American tourist visiting Italy to get over a broken heart, and leads him into a dangerous world of mystery and intrigue.
According to UK magazine Empire, it is not yet known what roles Bettany or Sewell will have in the flick, which is being directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Supermodels like Miranda Kerr are blowing A-list celebs such as Reece Witherspoon and Angelina Jolie out of the water when it comes to magazine stands and ad campaigns.
Australia’s Courier-Mail reports a seismic shift in the publishing world is toppling Hollywood celebs off the covers of the world’s leading fashion mags.
Vogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements said: “Those celebrity covers are so ubiquitous nowadays and they don’t really have the same sales drive that they used to. Also, they are so tied up with their own deals, endorsements and products that it’s all become a bit farcical and you can’t get them to go on that fashion journey with you like you can with a supermodel.”
Magazine sales are falling and models are on the rise, the newspaper says. In addition, Australia has a clutch of hot new young supermodels to pack a glossy punch.
“With the growth of the celebrity culture you know so much about stars’ lives and they are not regarded as a blank canvas, whereas models still have a degree of anonymity and mystery surrounding them,” says Catherine McNeil, a model who features in Paris Vogue, Vogue Australia, V magazine and Numero.
Jessica Hart, who clinched an H&M deal, said: “The pendulum has swung back to appreciating models. I just think it’s a refreshing change … the other good thing about Australians is that there is not one specific look … we are all different.”
Elyse Taylor, a favourite on Australian Vogue covers, said: “Today’s supermodels have to work really hard to get every job but, from a personality point of view, they don’t have to conform to a certain stereotype. Today supermodels are applauded for individuality. Fortunately, I think editors are now starting to realise that readers can relate to models and are deciding to put us back on the covers.”
Angelina Jolie may play the part of a woman who can never have children in a movie adapted from Serena: A Novel.
Jolie at 34 is a passionate mother of six children, three of whom she adopted. She is reported in talks with The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky to make an adaptation of a 2008 book set in 1929 by Ron Rash.
The novel, set in the rugged mountain terrain of North Carolina, is acclaimed for its blend of violence and mystery. Serena: A Novel tells the story of a newlywed couple who move to the area to start a timber empire. The wife, Serena, is driven to push her husband to commit ruthless acts that culminate with her desire to kill a child he fathered illegitimately, Reuters reports.
The top-dollar actress is currently shooting The Tourist in Europe with Johnny Depp, and was reportedly under consideration for a role as Kay Scarpetta in a yet-to-be titled movie of one of Patricia Cornwell’s tales.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reportedly took their kids along for a Valentine’s dinner.
The superstar couple are said to have taken their three eldest children – Maddox, Pax and Zahara – to a Valentine’s Day eve dinner at the Benihana restaurant.
A source told Life & Style: “Angie’s been coming in here since she was two years old. She’d come here with her parents and brother and loved to sit at the table and watch the chefs cook her shrimp.”
The source added: “She came with Brad, Maddox, Pax and Zahara. She obviously took great joy in re-creating the experience of her childhood as the children enjoyed the spectacle of the food being cooked.”
The chef reportedly made the children’s vegetables into heart shapes while Angelina ate her favourite dish of shrimp with vegetables and edamame and Brad had Kobe beef.
A waist-cinching belt worn by celebrities after giving birth could be harmful, according to UK midwives.
The cinched waist look is thought to be achieved by way of an elasticised belt – or abdominal binder.
But Britain’s Royal College of Midwives said the binders may damage women’s health.
An RCM midwife said: “It is not safe to wear them just after giving birth. I wouldn’t recommend it from a medical perspective.”
The £85 ($137) Cinch went on sale in Britain last month. It was claimed such devices trimmed the waists of A-list celebrity mothers, including Angelina Jolie, Gwen Stefani and Minnie Driver.
But the nurse said: “A midwife needs to check that a woman’s uterus is going down after birth. Wearing that could hide the fact that a woman’s uterus isn’t going down, and conceal internal bleeding.”
A spokesman for the association, meanwhile, said that there is no official policy on the binders.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie took twins Knox and Vivienne out for ice cream on a recent trip to Jordan.
Brad, 45, and Angelina, 34, were in Amman, Jordan, when they stopped for ice cream and visited the Licky Licious ice cream on Rainbow Street.
The store’s co-owner Ihab Fakhouri later posted a picture of the superstar family and posted it on his Twitter page.
He said: “They were walking down the street and saw our shop. Brad stopped and said: ‘Do you guys have ice-cream?’ I said: ‘Are you kidding? Of course!’”
It is claimed the superstar couple spent 10-15 minutes in the store with their youngest children as Brad sampled some of the flavours and shared some vanilla with daughter Vivienne.
Angelina then tried the mango, which she shared with son Knox, 14 months.
The pair have been in the Middle East to visit the Iraqi refugees in Syria as part of Angelina’s work as a goodwill ambassador.
Actress Angelina Jolie, 34, doesn’t follow what the media says about her and can’t understand why anyone is interested as she thinks her family are relatively boring.
Jolie said: “I don’t ask for all this tabloid attention so I never read what they write about us. First I see myself as a mother – that’s my priority.
“I have a family to take care of, I don’t even go out that much, I travel and do a film and that’s about it, so I don’t understand why people want to know more about our lives.”
The partner of actor Brad Pitt added: “There is a tendency to know more and more but I’m so used to this craziness which always surrounds us.”
Angelina Jolie’s estranged father thinks that Megan Fox is a worthy rival for his daughter’s signature Lara Croft role, it was reported.
Actor Jon Voight weighed in on the rumoured rivalry of the two actors for the part, saying, “They’re both very beautiful and they’re both kind of sexy girls.”
Speculation that Fox might replace Jolie for the new slated Tomb Raider movie began weeks ago after producer Dan Lin told a video interview: “It is an origin story so it is a younger Lara Croft. It will have character-driven action.”
Fox is 23, and Jolie is 34. Voight also had a tip for Fox and a compliment for his daughter. “Maybe Megan will start doing the things that Angie is so well known for. Angie is known for helping with kids and for her concern for others. I think that would be wonderful for all of the kids if Megan were to do the same.”
Jolie’s last Lara Croft appearance was in the 2003 Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
Winona Ryder said super star Angelina Jolie was struggling to be taken seriously while making their movie together, Girl, Interrupted, it was reported in the US.
Ryder, who suffered a career jag when she was convicted of shoplifting, says Jolie – who was not cast in the lead – was destined for the spotlight in the tale of a girl’s stay in a mental hospital.
“I knew from the outset that whoever played Lisa was going to get all the attention,” Ryder was reported telling an entertainment magazine.
“At one point they asked if I wanted to play Lisa and I said, ‘No, I want to be Susanna’.”
Ryder was the 1999 movie’s lead and its executive producer.
“When it came out, people almost felt bad for me. But I expected it all along. I was really happy with the film, and really proud of it,” she said.
She said Jolie at the time was struggling to be accepted as a serious actress and not for her movie star looks. “At the time I worked with her, she was battling her looks because she’s so beautiful… She wanted very much to be taken seriously and not just judged on her looks. And she conquered that,” said Ryder.
After years of keeping silent on Brad Pitt ditching her for Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston finally breaks her silence and talks to Jonathan Van Meter about the reason for her divorce.
She asks me if I ever saw a cartoon that appeared in the New York Post a couple of years ago that depicts Jennifer Aniston talking on the phone in her kitchen. The bubble over her head says, HI ANGELINA…I DECIDED TO TAKE YOU UP ON YOUR OFFER OF A “SIT-DOWN TALK.”…In the drawing, Aniston is loading a shotgun, and there is a copy of Vogue sitting next to her. Someone sent Jennifer Aniston the cartoon (“the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says), and afterward, she could not resist the urge to buy a copy of Vogue to see what the fuss was about. What really rankled Aniston about the piece was that Jolie felt the need to recount a detailed time line of exactly how her relationship developed on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, while Jennifer Aniston was still married to and living with Brad Pitt.
Kerry Katona is the most hated woman in Britain — according to a poll of British women. The former Atomic Kitten, 27 — seen drinking and smoking while pregnant — came top, followed by party girl Peaches Geldof, 19.
Third was film beauty Angelina Jolie, 33 — partner of Jennifer Anistons’s ex, Brad Pitt.
A spokeswoman for onepoll.com, which conducted the survey, said: “British women have very strong ideas about who they do and don’t like.”
Seems to me British women have very strong ideas about who they are jealous of…Angelina Jolie? It has to be jealousy.
Apparently there was something hot about the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Or at least at the Jolie-Pitt table.
Brad and Angelina took some time to make out in between award presentations. Ya know, I’ve always heard that women get that way in the early stages of pregnancy. Hmmmm…..the rumors are flying and who am I to stop them?
Angelina’s flowing dress that could easily hide a baby bump didn’t help her denials either. Could there really be more Pitts on the way?
