Gerard Butler drama ‘Motor City’ stalls before reaching start line: crew sent home

The plug was pulled yesterday morning (1 Sept) on Motor City, the revenge drama that was scheduled to start production late this month with Albert Hughes directing and Gerard Butler, Mickey Rourke and Adrien Brody starring. 

The film was in pre-production, and the crew was just told to go home. It is an abrupt and chaotic development. Insiders tell me that Motor City stalled after the film’s backers, Emmett/Furla Films, Envision Entertainment, and Mark Damon’s Foresight Entertainment, realized at the last moment that the release date given them by Warner Bros through its deal with Joel Silver’s Dark Castle turned out to be a drop dead date. 

Production was to start September 17th, meaning the film could only have 12 weeks of post production. It wasn’t enough time. They needed that studio release to justify all of the foreign distribution deals made for the film by Damon. As a result, they could not secure a bond and couldn’t move forward.

Read more at Deadline

 
 

Gerard Butler: ‘Motor City’ will begin filming in Atlanta next month

A recent crew call for the upcoming movie Motor City confirms it won’t be filmed in The Motor City at all.

According to a recent posting on Georgia.org, Motor City will shoot in Atlanta from mid-September to early November.

Motor City stars Gerard Butler as an ex-convict tracking down the people who framed him to get revenge. Mickey Rourke is also in talks to star.

CL Casting is currently casting extras for the movie too. They recently posted a casting call looking for “males with longer hair.” You can check out all of their casting calls on Facebook.

Read more at On Location Vacations

Gerard Butler arrives at Cannes to talk about Motor City and his ‘soccer’ movie

From STV:

At the glamorous Cannes Film Festival, Scottish actor Gerard Butler discussed his plans for the future – including a new “full-out action movie” in which he’s starring alongside Gary Oldman.

There was a great moment of amusement when he referred to football as ‘soccer’ – explaining with a grin that he’s used to talking about the film in the US, leading to using the slightly uncharacteristic term for a Scot!

Gerard was last seen in Machine Gun Preacher, and one of the projects next up is Motor City, which will be directed by Albert Hughes and co-stars Gary Oldman, and starts shooting in September.

He explained: "I haven't done a full-out action movie since, I may be forgetting myself, but since Gamer. It was 300 then Gamer, and that was a few years ago.”

Gerard added: "Recently I've just done a couple movies - one is a soccer film.”

Putting his head in his hands, he grinned and continued: "I can't believe I just said 'soccer,' that's like forgetting your mother's name or something saying 'soccer', but it's because I'm so used to speaking about this in America.

“If I say 'football' people are like 'What are you saying? Football? American Football?' So a movie where I was a professional football player, soccer player and then another one where I was a surfer, so they all required additional training."

Of being in Cannes, Gerard said: “I have film meetings or press conferences, but I don't have a movie showing.

“When you don't have a movie showing, it's kind of hard to be going to see other movies. You can't really go down other people's press lines. So you've always got to make sure you are playing it politically correct.

"Also I was doing some work with Artists for Peace and Justice, and Sean Penn did a charity function for Haiti. When you come to Cannes you cram in a few things in a few short days.”

See the interview at STV 

Press Association re Motor City

Gerard Butler to replace Dominic Cooper in 'Motor City'?

Gerard Butler is in talks to take the lead role in Motor City.

The Coriolanus star is negotiating to replace Dominic Cooper on Albert Hughes's revenge thriller, reports Variety.

Jake Gyllenhaal was briefly attached to the film following the exit of original star Cooper, both of whom abandoned the project due to scheduling conflicts.

Butler will join The Dark Knight Rises star Gary Oldman and The Rum Diary's Amber Heard on the movie.

Motor City centres on a small-time crook who is released from prison after being framed for a crime and sets out for revenge and to win back the woman he loves.

Butler most recently starred in Machine Gun Preacher.

Motor City is due to go into production in June, at the same time as diamond heist pic Brilliant, to which Butler is also attached.

Source: Digital Spy