Though it closed only three years ago, the New York Post says the Roundabout Theater Company is planning to revive their Tony-winning revival of Cabaret with the original creative team and star Alan Cumming intact.... Steven Culp (Desperate Housewives, ABC's upcoming Traveler) has a new gig, says Playbill.com, playing a pedophile in a West Coast take on the controversial drama Blackbird.... Jason Patric has exited Neil LaBute's soon-to-bow In a Dark Dark House due to "creative differences," and will be replaced by Frederick Weller.... Are you an ogre-achiever? Want to make an ass of yourself in front of NYC tourists? If you have what it takes to play the big guy or Donkey, the producers of the upcoming Shrek musical want to hear from you. Details at IWantToBeShrek.com. — Reporting by Raven Snook
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As The Class awaits word on a possible second season, Jesse Tyler Ferguson is keeping busy, reprising the role he created on Broadway of Leaf Coneybear, for the Los Angeles premiere of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. The musical's four-week run begins May 27.In other stage news, Ron Livingston (Standoff) and Jason Patric (yep, Speed 2) are two-thirds of the cast for Neil LaBute's In a Dark Dark House, world-premiering May 16 off-Broadway. Also, the New York Post hears that Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to visit the GWW this fall as the star of The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, which Al Pacino fronted 30 years ago.
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Per Variety, Reese Witherspoon is likely to star in a remake of Bunny Lake Is Missing, a 1965 Otto Preminger thriller about a woman whose daughter goes missing, yet perhaps never existed. Um, Flightplan? That Julianne Moore thing?... Brittany Snow has landed the lead in Finding Amanda, an indie in which a TV exec (Matthew Broderick) tries to save his niece from her life as a Vegas hooker and stripper.... Spike Lee will direct L.A. Riots, a drama based in the racially charged events of 1992.... Per the Hollywood Reporter, James Franco, Frances Fisher and Jason Patric have joined the cast of Paul Haggis' new film.... Dennis Quaid plays an NFL coach in The Express, a biopic of Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis. All together now: Let's go, Orange!
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Just like co-star Jason Patric, Ray Liotta's treading familiar ground as a police detective in the the dark crime drama Narc (in select theaters). But though Copland and Unlawful Entry taught him how to hold a gun and talk like a man of the law, Liotta notes that gruff and damaged Detective Henry Oak demanded a completely different, more nuanced performance. And judging by the high marks he's getting from critics — and the Oscar buzz reverberating throughout Hollywood — the 47-year-old actor more than rose to the challenge.
"This is a much more real human being," he says of his Narc alter ego, who is searching for the perp who murderered his partner. "With my other cop roles, one was a drug addict, in Copland
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The gritty Detroit cop drama Narc marks Jason Patric's second role as a troubled undercover narcotics detective. His first was Rush, back in 1991. For an actor whose big releases are few and far between, this kind of repetition could be seen as risky. Then again, Patric knows his career path has always been screwy, so why stop now?
"I don't work often enough to repeat myself!" grouses the 36-year-old, whose last film was 1998's disturbing Your Friends and Neighbors. "Rush was over 10 years ago," he reminds us. "I was 24 years old. I'm a different man now, with different things to show."
Older and wiser, Patric definitely hopes not to repeat mistakes like his big-budget flop, Speed 2: Cruise Control. "That was just a
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