Oscar winner Forest Whitaker and director Kenny Leon have led a mass exodus from a planned, all-black Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was to also star Phylicia Rashad (as Big Mamma), Audra McDonald (Maggie) and Anthony Mackie (Brick). Sources tell the New York Post that the staging's "inexperienced" and "inept" producers — two hedge-fund managers who, for instance, wanted to replace four-time Tony winner McDonald (whom they derided as "a regional theater actress") with Beyoncé — are to blame.
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Per the Hollywood Reporter, George Clooney will play a killer in Burn After Reading, a spy caper being helmed by Joel and Ethan Coen, with whom Clooney did O Brother, Where Are Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty.... Universal has grabbed the rights to Cobalt 60, a cult comic book set in a postapocalytpic world inhabited by mutants. Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) will direct.... Robert Zemeckis will release the Polar Express-like, digitally enhanced Beowulf, starring Angelina Jolie, in large-format 3-D on Nov. 16.... Per Variety, Sarah Jessica Parker has replaced Rachel Weisz opposite Dennis Quaid in Smart People.... Peter Sarsgaard will join future bro-in-law Jake Gyllenhaal in Rendition, director Gavin Hood's Tsotsi follow-up.... Anthony Mackie (Half Nelson) will play Olympic track-and-field legend Jesse Owens in a biopic shooting next summer.
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