Leapin’ lizards! It’s been almost thirty years since John Huston’s adaptation of the Broadway smash Annie hit movie theaters, but now insiders tell Vulture exclusively that Will Smith and Jay-Z are in negotiations with Oscar-winning screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson to re-adapt the screenplay for an updated version of the musical that would star Smith’s youngest progeny, Willow.

If the deal with Thompson goes through, the project will be the first fruit of the partnership between Smith and Jay-Z that Columbia Pictures announced back in January, but it won’t be the first time that these principals have worked together: Thompson is currently co-starring with Smith as Agent O in Men in Black III, while Jay-Z, Smith and his spouse Jada Pinkett-Smith all served co-producers of the Broadway musical Fela!, nominated for 11 Tony Awards last year.

No word on whether Thompso (who recently scripted and starred in Universal Pictures’ Nanny McPhee franchise) will also write herself into a role as the orphanage director who loves booze almost as much as she hates children, but here’s hoping.

Source

The Helen Bamber Foundation releases the charity single ‘The Sky Is Always Mine’. Written and produced by world record breaker and tireless campaigner Phil Knight, and sung by the multi-faceted talent Desi Valentine, the aim of the single is to raise money for the unquantifiable number of women and children who are subjects of human and sex trafficking every year.

‘We all want our children to live in a better world, it’s really important. I think what you’re doing is brilliant.’ Lorraine Kelly speaking to Phil Knight on GMTV.
‘Sex trafficking is a hugely important subject, and I believe we need as much art as we can get to help people understand what’s going on. It’s all the little efforts that produce a shift in consciousness. What’s more, to do nothing is unthinkable.’ Emma Thompson, Chair of The Helen Bamber Foundation

‘Phil’s story is an excellent example of how survivors and supporters can work together to raise awareness and support the anti-trafficking and human rights cause.’ Helen Bamber Foundation.

Breaking down traditional barriers to raise awareness for The Helen Bamber Foundation is not uncommon ground for Phil Knight. Since breaking a world record two years ago in Leicester Sq by drumming for four and a half consecutive days and raising over £4000 for the charity, Phil then went on to write and co-produce an uplifting compilation charity CD called Just Enough For The Real World. Due to popular demand following the album launch at Islington’s Pleasance Theatre in September 2010, the theatre invited the team of singers and musicians back to perform live on 5th, 6th and 7th May 2011. The release of the leading track from the album, The Sky Is Always Mine, is naturally the next step forward for the campaign.

‘If this CD and all the hard work behind it can help save just one life, it will all have been worth it,’ Phil Knight.

Full Article

The Guardian has a new piece up from Emma and her son Tindy Agaba on Liberia that is a must read.

Emma The first thing I learn is the Liberian handshake. A series of squeezes ends with a click of your fingers. Liberia’s founders were the children of people who’d had the tops of their third fingers chopped off to identify them as slaves. The finger-click is a firm but playful indication that their offspring were anything but.

Atop the highest point in Monrovia sits the dusty ruins of the Ducor Palace Hotel. Abandoned by its owners in 1990, this huge Intercontinental was used by the warlord Charles Taylor as a barracks. We walk into the empty swimming pool. Children used to slide down it on plastic trays but the place is razor-wired off now.
Source

EXCLUSIVE: Academy Award-winning actress/screenwriter Emma Thompson is locked in a row over who authored her latest film project Effie. Whether the film gets made or not could depend on the outcome.
The film’s producers have gone to a New York federal court to get a declaration that Thompson’s script doesn’t infringe the copyright of playwright Gregory Murphy’s play called The Countess. Both works are reportedly about a love triangle involving celebrated art critic John Ruskin, his teenage wife Effie Gray, and pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, a sexual scandal that rocked 19th Century England.
Murphy came out with his play first. The Countess got good reviews in 1999, played 634 performances in New York, and was revived on a London stage in 2005.
But according to a lawsuit that was filed by the film’s producers, Thompson never had access to Murphy’s play, which was purportedly turned into a screenplay, and denies copying it.
Murphy’s lawyers are said to be hounding the new film production anyway, which appears to be interfering with the making of the film. According to the complaint, “In order to close financing to produce a motion picture based on Effie, [the plaintiff] must be able to demonstrate that there is no validity to Mr. Murphy’s claim of infringement.”
The film is currently slated to star Orlando Bloom, Saoirse Ronan, and Thompson herself.
Source

New photos of Emma! I SO love the short hair she has going on, it looks amazing.

#2 Emma Thompson was haunting and powerful as the angel who came down to command Prior to be a prophet

TV’s Top Ten Angels

For a while Carey Mulligan was “attached,” as she was to so many other projects that never came to fruition, to Emma Thompson’s Effie, a biopic about the 19th century scandalmaker who married famous writer John Ruskin only to annul her marriage to him and run off with his protege, pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.

Even though Mulligan is only 25, though, she’s been traded in on this one for a younger actress– though in this case it’s far more appropriate to the story. Production Weekly reports that Saoirse Ronan is instead set to star in the film, which Thompson wrote and will also play a small role in. The film also now stars Orlando Bloom and Greg Wise– presumably as the two other corners of the love triangle, with Bloom as the younger painter Millais and Wise as Ruskin– and Imelda Staunton in an unspecified role. Yes, both of these actors are way, way too old to be romantic leads to the 16-year-old Ronan, but that’s pretty true to the historical record; Effie Gray was only 17 when she married 31-year-old Ruskin. Bloom is still a little too old to play Millais, who was the same age as Gray, but casting her opposite an older actor will help age up Ronan, who will need to play Gray at age 23 as well.

Effie will be Thompson’s first non-Nanny McPhee screenplay since the 2001 effort for the TV film Wit, and given that she won an Oscar for her 1995 Sense and Sensibility screenplay, there’s good reason to look forward to her return to the page. Between the fascinating love triangle story and the remarkable cast, Effie sounds like something every prestige film nerd should look forward to while the rest of you salivate over Avengers casting rumors.

So cool of Emma to do this! And if you head over to the BBC Website you can read the full story and watch the clip!

Tony Hull, head teacher at Costessey Junior School, has won the National College Award for Head Teacher of the Year at the Teaching Awards 2010.
He was presented the award by Academy Award winning actress Emma Thompson during a school assembly.
“It was a great surprise – it’s not everyday in your career you get something like that,” said Mr Hull.
Before winning the national title, Mr Hull picked up the east of England head teacher award in June.

EMMA Thompson, Florence Welch and Sam Taylor-Wood have been named Women of the Year.

Sarah Brown, the wife of former prime minister Gordon Brown, was named an International Woman of Influence at last night’s Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards.

Nanny McPhee actress Emma Thompson was presented with a gong for Role Model of the Year for her work as an actress, producer, writer and activist, campaigning for victims of abuse, torture and rape.

Florence And The Machine singer Florence Welch won Breakthrough of the Year, while artist-turned-film director Sam Taylor-Wood was named Renaissance Woman of the Year at the London event.