Doug Liman has come aboard as presenter of The Butcher, The Chef and The Swordsman, a Mandarin-language film that was made for China by Fox International Productions but will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Chinese filmmaker Wuershan, the film has the kind of visual stylized martial arts action that could give it a shot to break out beyond China, where it will be released this fall. Sanford Panitch, who left New Regency to run the Fox that is generating local language films for territories that include China, Korea, Spain, India and Russia, worked with Liman when he was a New Regency exec on Mrs. and Mrs. Smith and Jumper. He showed the film to the director and Liman wanted to get involved. Liman, who'll follow Fair Game with the Japanese manga adaptation All You Need Is Kill for Warner Bros, sparked to the Chinese film and will help promote it as it plays in Toronto’s Midnight Madness program. “Wuershan’s debut movie is so wildly imaginative, it changed my perception of China as a whole,” Liman said. “It is a thrill to present this first time Chinese director to the international community.” The film follows the journey of a mystical blade as it passes through the hands of three different men. They find its power to be double-edged. It gets them their wildest desires, but also has the power to corrupt. The ... Read More »

Tony Shalhoub, who has finished his Emmy-winning eight season run on Monk, will figure out his next move with the help of ICM. He has just signed with the agency. He had been at CAA. Aside from his series run, Shalhoub recently appeared on Broadway in Lend Me A Tenor, directed by Stanley Tucci. He remains repped by longtime manager Mary Goldberg.

This is a seminal year for Albert Brooks. After completing an ambitious science fiction novel 2030: The Real Story of What Happens To America and setting it to be published next May by St. Martin’s Press, Brooks has signed on for his first screen turn as a truly dangerous badass. Brooks has joined the cast of Drive, the Nicolas Winding Refn-directed adaptation of the James Sallis novel that stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and Bryan Cranston. Gosling plays a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver and gets in over his head. Brooks will play Bernie Rose, a transplanted New York mobster who comes to L.A. and is not to be messed with. Now, Brooks played on the wrong side of the law in Out of Sight, but let’s face it, he was a wimp. Had Bernie Rose been the screenwriter issued a "walk on" pass to meet Steven Spielberg in The Muse? Had Julie Hagerty gambled away Bernie Rose's nest egg in Lost in America? Fuggedaboutit. Brooks, who last directed 2005’s Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, will jump into the Drive role after spending the better part of two years working on his debut novel. It takes a serious look at what might be happening 20 years in the future, when cancer has been eradicated and life expectancies have been pushed up to 110, making 70 the new middle age. That creates overpopulation and a simmering resentment ... Read More »

First Linda Hamilton, now Timothy Dalton. After casting Terminator star Hamilton to play Chuck (Zachary Levi) mom, NBC spy dramedy Chuck has drafted another 1980s action star to recur next season. Dalton, who has experience in spy fare having played James Bond in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, will appear in a multiple-episode arc playing a mysterious stranger who has a history with Chuck’s mom (Hamilton). This marks Dalton’s first series appearance on American television since he guest-starred on Charlie’s Angels in 1979. Dalton, who recently added his voice to the animated hit film Toy Story 3, will next be seen in The Tourist. Chuck returns for its fourth season on Monday, Sept. 20.