Quick Takes: Michael Douglas battles tumor
Michael Douglas has a tumor in his throat and will undergo radiation and chemotherapy.
The Academy Award-winning actor’s treatment is scheduled to last eight weeks. Douglas, 65, said he expects to make a full recovery.
Douglas won an Oscar for “Wall Street” and appears this fall in the sequel, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” He teamed with Karl Malden in TV’s “The Streets of San Francisco” and went on to star in such films as “Romancing the Stone,” “Basic Instinct,” “The American President” and “Wonder Boys.”
—Associated Press
TV offers are sliding his way
Steven Slater, the flight attendant who slid from an airplane to fame last week, now employs the services of one of Hollywood’s top public relations representatives.
Howard Bragman, chairman of media and public relations agency Fifteen Minutes, confirmed that he is now representing Slater and will help him assess offers to appear in proposed television programs inspired by Slater’s dramatic exit from a JetBlue plane at New York’s Kennedy Airport after he cursed a passenger over the public address system and deployed the emergency slide.
“There are probably 25 reality show offers on the table at this point,” said Bragman. “There are dozens of e-mails and offers to this guy.”
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown charged Slater with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief, felonies that could land him in prison for as many as seven years.
—From CNN
Cameron goes into the abyss
“Titanic” director James Cameron spent his birthday underwater in Russia.
Cameron, who turned 56 Monday, dove beneath the surface of the world’s deepest lake in a submersible he used to film the wreck of the Titanic, the Foundation for the Preservation of Lake Baikal said.
A longtime ocean enthusiast, the writer and director of “Avatar” has other underwater projects in the works. Cameron said he is building a submarine in Australia that will take him 36,000 feet underwater. He is also developing an upgraded 3-D underwater camera and has plans for an underwater feature film that he said he might make before taking on an “Avatar” sequel.
—Wire reports
Actress inked for ‘Tattoo’
After months of speculation over one of the most buzzed about casting choices in recent history, Sony said Monday that actress Rooney Mara will play Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s English-language version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
Mara, whose most notable credit so far is “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” has already worked with Fincher on this fall’s “The Social Network.”
Mara, 24, will star opposite Daniel Craig in three films adapted from Stieg Larsson’s novels, which also include “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Shooting commences in September in Sweden, with the first film to be released in December 2011.
—Amy Kaufman
‘Walking With’ more creatures
What do you do after you’ve walked with dinosaurs?
Why, romp with apes and dragons, of course.
So says Carmen Pavlovic, chief executive of Creature Production Co., which is bringing its “Walking With Dinosaurs — The Arena Spectacular” to a close in Southern California next month after a three-year tour of North America.
“Our next production is ‘King Kong – Live on Stage’ in cooperation with the Merian C. Cooper Estate,” Pavlovic said in a news release. “We have also announced a collaboration with DreamWorks Animation to develop an arena show based on their hugely successful film ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’”
“Walking With Dinosaurs,” loosely based on the 1999 Emmy-winning BBC series of the same name, is a spectacle of 17 life-sized dinosaurs that are operated by puppeteers and mechanics.
The show played the Honda Center in Anaheim and Staples Center in L.A. in 2008 and now is returning to the two venues to close out a trek that promoters say will have covered 1,081 performances in 144 cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
—Lee Margulies