Another Oceans?

by Chris   ⋅   March 27, 2006   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

Oceans Thirteen is set to start filming July 21st. Yup, it’s not just another fake IMDB entry. This time the film will star Ellen Barkin and George Clooney. Now, I’m as much a fan of The Clooney as the next guy, but do we need another Oceans? Does anyone remember the second one, or the first one for that matter? I’ve seen both, and can’t for the life of me recall anything other than Casey Affleck playing with Remote Control cars (Eleven), an acrobatic asian man (Eleven), and Vincent Cassel’s crazy cool break-dancing (Twelve).

Anyways, from Variety:

Soderbergh has already committed to direct returning cast members George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Eddie Jemison, Shaobo Qin, Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould.

The film was scripted by “Rounders” scribes Brian Koppelman and David Levien.

WB president Jeff Robinov had made “Ocean’s Thirteen” a priority, but it took a lot of cajoling by Weintraub to align the schedules of Clooney, Pitt, Damon and Soderbergh; each made concessions to expedite the film.

…

“The odds were long on this happening, and it would not have been possible were it not for those actors and director moving other projects out of the way,” Weintraub said. “The five of us are all great friends, and we decided we were going to kill ourselves to get this done.”

….

Weintraub wouldn’t disclose plot details, other than that Barkin gets closely involved with Damon’s character.

As for the absence of Roberts, who starred in both pictures, and “Ocean’s Twelve” addition Zeta-Jones, Weintraub said: “Their characters just weren’t part of the script this time.”

I guess the Oceans crew felt that they needed another industry funded vacation.