Screen Talk: No plans for Mormon musical

Fans of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker will have to wait a little longer for any movie version of the duo's Broadway musical The Book of Mormon.

The duo killed Kenny and a host of other hopes after saying that while they'd like to pursue a film based on the musical there are no immediate plans. While the hunger for a movie is real in Hollywood, the duo have said they're happy to let the stage show remain as such without contaminating it with a movie version. So get those tickets for Broadway while they're around.

A Brand new way

The Oscar winning scribe Diablo Cody is assembling her cast for her first outing in the director's chair. Cody has brought in Julianne Hough and Russell Brand to star in the once titled "Lamb of God". The now untitled project, currently eyeing a spring start next year, follows a young, conservative, religious woman (Hough) who loses her faith after a plane crash. She opts to go to Las Vegas to live the life of a sinner, where else? And on her journey finds her way back to her faith. Brand will play her unlikely companion who helps her find herself. Brand and Hough recently wrapped Rock of Ages for New Line, so have on screen history if not chemistry.

A Touche of class

Former Disney international acquisitions executive Alicia Keyes Touche is trying her hand at producing her first feature Blaze You Out, currently shooting in New Mexico. The exec turned moviemaker is using all her studio experience and has raised 25% of the budget through New Mexico's state tax incentives for film-makers. Billed as a thriller, Blaze You Out is co-written and co-directed by Mateo Frazier and Diego Joaquí* López and stars fresh faces Veronica Diaz-Carranza and Melissa Cordero, alongside the award-winning Elizabeth Peña and Jeremy Ray Valdez. The cast also boasts industry veterans Raoul Trujillo, Mark Adair Rios and Q'orianka Kilcher. It tells the story of an aspiring DJ and her sister struggling to make a living in a New Mexico community suffocated by years of heroin abuse.

Taking the plunge

In US film-making circles it is accepted wisdom that hedging bets is always a good thing. But for one project, a music-driven love story named Anything But Ordinary, the manner of hedging lives up to the idea's name. It is a project being developed simultaneously as a book and a film. So while Emma Roberts and AnnaSophia Robb are attached to star in the drama and Sanaa Hamri is attached to direct, debut author Lara Avary is writing the book for Hyperion. Charlie Craig wrote the original story and the screenplay, which was also worked on by Liz Garcia and Lisa Barrett. The film's backing is being put together independently. Ordinary is the story of a 17-year-old diving star that suffers a tragic accident during her final Olympic trials. When she wakes from a coma five years later, as a 21-year old, she is considered a medical miracle. But what no one else knows is that she has become a synesthete, processing words and numbers through colour and sound.

Snow business

Brittany Snow has joined the cast of musical comedy Pitch Perfect, directed by Jason Moore. The movie takes place in the competitive world of a cappella singing groups and also stars Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson in the story of an all-girls college a cappella group trying to rebuild with a shaky rookie in the lead, so they can take on the all-guys championship team. Kay Cannon adapted the screenplay from the non-fiction book written by GQ's Mickey Rapkin. It is backed by Universal and is scheduled to begin shooting any day now. Moore's resume includes a stint as director of Avenue Q on Broadway, which garnered him a Tony Award so he's used to a good old song and dance.