Screen Talk: There's no business...

By Stuart Kemp of the hollywood reporter

The industry in Los Angeles and its Californian environs found itself gobsmacked by a recent report that trumpeted the fact that there are 36,100 fewer jobs now in California because the state hasn't sufficiently wooed the entertainment industry.

The report, from the wondrously named Milken Institute, claims 10,600 entertainment jobs have fled the state since 1997, along with 25,500 jobs indirectly related to the industry. The average salary of the lost jobs comes in at a rather eye-watering $92,000 (£58,000) per year. But most chins were wagging about a list of movies that chose to film outside of California to take advantage of more lucrative tax credits and other business incentives. Right up there was Captain America: the First Avenger, which is filming in the UK, of all places.

Ready, aim, shoot

The horror meister Sam Raimi (above left) is attached to shoot a sci-fi treatment of the legendary cowboy hero Wyatt Earp. Raimi is in line to direct Earp: Saints for Sinners, an adaptation of a Radical graphic novel. Matt Cirulnick will write the script for the project from the novel, which reimagines Earp set in a future in which he takes on outlaws in a ravaged society where the only boom town left is Las Vegas. First up for Raimi, though, is Oz: the Great and Powerful, a prequel of sorts of The Wizard of Oz, for Disney.

Total rebuke

Hollywood's penchant for remakes hit breaking point among cyber geeks last week. The intel that Columbia is negotiating with Len Wiseman to direct a remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi action movie Total Recall was greeted with screams of protest. Seems Paul Verhoeven's original holds a special place among the expert industry observers inhabiting the online ether. "But this is Total Recall!!... WTF!!" is one sample reaction. Then the serious question: "What is Len going to do... turn a great and exciting adult violent action-thriller with some dark themes into a PG video-game bland piece of mass-media entertainment... as he did with Die Hard 4!!!... How do you do better than Schwarzenegger, Stone, Ticotin, Cox and of course Ironside!!!" How indeed. Fewer exclamation marks, perhaps.

Teenage pick

Olivia Crocicchia (above centre) is starring opposite John C Reilly in the indie comedy Terri, written by the novelist Patrick deWitt. Directed by Azazel Jacobs, Terri details the story of a large 14-year-old boy in a small town struggling to adjust to his difficult life. Crocicchia will play Heather, a pretty but sad girl who helps Terri cope with a frequently hostile world.

An adult approach to convalescence?

Rob Lowe (above right) has enjoyed his fair share of what he might call unwanted media attention and an infamous sex tape in the late 1980s didn't go down too well with certain parts of Hollywood's public face. Lowe bounced back from the scandal with a slew of high-profile turns and even parodied himself on Saturday Night Live. But his latest project looks certain to test his continuing recovery from the wild days of yore. He's one of the stars behind I Melt with You, a low-budget drama being directed by Mark Pellington. And currently in negotiations to join the cast is Sasha Grey, the adult-film star. Grey, along with Zander Eckhouse, Abhi Sinha and Arielle Kebbel, are joining Thomas Jane, Lowe and Jeremy Piven in the drama, which Pellington wrote with Glen Porter. The project follows a group of college buddies (Jane, Lowe and Piven) who, disappointed with how things have turned out as adults, resurrect a pact they vowed to live, die and kill by. Grey will play a character named Raven, described as a free spirit who helps one of the men realise that nirvana can be achieved only by death.