Quentin Tarantino is getting hit with a plagiarism lawsuit.

E! Online is reporting that the Inglourious Basterds director is being accused, along with former Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein, of stealing the concept for a deadly assassin character in Kill Bill.

According to E!, in the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Dannez Hunter claims he submitted a treatment to Miramax back in 1999 featuring a character named Ren Short who hails from a historical Samurai lineage and watches his mother brutally murdered “in a cartoon format.”

Tarantino’s 2004 movie, Kill Bill, features a female character named O-Ren Ishii, played by Lucy Liu. In an Anime sequence O-Ren witnesses her parents killed on orders from a Japanese mob boss. She eventually becomes a member of the Deadly Vipers assassin squad (her name is Cottonmouth) and takes her revenge by assuming control of the Tokyo Yakuza.

Aside from the copyright claim, E! says Hunter, who describes himself as a minority and former “inner-city youth,” makes a separate allegation that the Disney subsidiary passed him over for employment and hired less qualified Jews and whites instead.

“[Plaintiff] was never given a return phone call, as numerous similar situated less qualified Jewish and White people were bestowed job after job after job,” Hunter alleges.

Seven years after the release of the first film, E! says Hunter is seeking $1 million in damages.

DreamWorks may have found a director for its Fright Night revamp.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that several directors were being considered for the high priority project and that one appears to have been chosen: Craig Gillespie. Sources told the Times that the studio has begun negotiations with Gillespie, whose most famous film to date is the whimsical Lars and the Real Girl, in which a man (Ryan Gosling) falls in love with a Real Doll.

Gillespie also helmed the obnoxious, dysfunctional-family flick, Mr. Woodcock, starring Billy Bob Thornton. The Times says he has a relationship with DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg via the Showtime series, The United States of Tara, on which Gillespie has served as director and producer.

The original Fright Night was released in 1985, and directed by Tom Holland. It stars Chris Sarandon, Amanda Bearse, William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowell and tells the story of a horror fan who suspects his new neighbours of being vampires.

It was a surprise box office hit and spawned a novelisation, a comic book series and a sequel, Fright Night Part II, in 1988. The second film was considerably less successful.

(Image: Columbia Pictures)

Cameron Diaz says ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake is the best person to star as her with her in Bad Teacher, and she’s “thrilled” about the pairing.

“We’re thrilled to have him,” Cameron told Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush on the Oscars red carpet on Sunday night. “He’s the best person for the job. He’s going to be hilarious.”

Timberlake was recently cast in the film, which is directed by Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story). He stars opposite Diaz, who plays a foulmouthed middle school teacher that, after getting dumped, makes a play for a colleague’s boyfriend. Timberlake is the boyfriend. Lucy Punch is the colleague.  Jason Segel, Molly Shannon and Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet are also in the cast.

Diaz praised Timberlake’s comedic prowess, saying, “He’s clearly a very talented comedian, look at his Saturday Night Live [skits].” She continued, “He’s fantastic, he’s going to be so great.”

Aside from bringing the laughs alongside Andy Samberg on SNL, the former ‘N Sync member has also had a handful of supporting film roles, including parts in Black Snake Moan and The Love Guru. He is also starring  in David Fincher’s The Social Network, which tells the story of the founding of Facebook. According to Variety, it was this performance that led Columbia pictures to cast him in Bad Teacher.

Diaz and Timberlake dated for four years, from 2003-2007.

Before he was the star of the Oscar winning The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner played serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. The movie, Dahmer, was released eight years ago, in 2002, and it is a role that haunts the actor to this day.

According to Starpulse, Renner can’t go to bars because the Wisconsin-based killer used to pick up his victims in bars. He’s too aware of the potential danger.

He says, “It really messed with me for a couple of years, that role. I couldn’t go into bars alone. I still really can’t. It makes me think about how easy it is to put something in someone’s drink and then have your way with them. I mean, oh my gosh. It’s just one of those things where someone who has a lot of free time can do a lot of good, or a lot of bad.”

Dahmer sentenced to life in 1992 after he was found guilty of 15 murders. He was killed in prison in 1994.

Renner earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his role in the film. He later went on to feature in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and 28 Weeks Later.

A Chinese court has dismissed a plagiarism lawsuit from a writer accusing James Cameron of stealing the idea for Avatar from his novel.

Zhou Shaomou filed suit against the Oscar-winning director, alleging the plot from the sci-fi blockbuster too closely resembled the 1997 novel The Legend of the Blue Crow, which he published online. The suit was asking for $146 million in damages.

Officials at two courts in China reportedly refused to submit the breach of copyright case, and now Starpulse says a court in Beijing has dismissed the lawsuit citing a lack of evidence, according to the country’s Global Times newspaper.

The New York Times adds that a Chinese representative for 20th Century Fox, which released the film, told The Global Times that the story line for Avatar was first devised in 1995, two years before Mr. Zhou wrote his novel.

Amanda Seyfried is kissing another girl in her upcoming film Chloe. She is not, however, getting any more comfortable with the same-sex smooches.

Last year the actress shared a lip lock with Megan Fox in the box office flop, Jennifer’s Body. And at the time, Fox told MTV that, while she herself was “comfortable” and “felt safer” kissing girls, Seyfried was “extremely uncomfortable.” Fox said, “I don’t think that — I know that. She was not comfortable and there was a lot of laughing — like, giggling fits that happened in between takes.”

Now Seyfried is getting very intimate with Julianne Moore in Chloe. The erotic thriller by Atom Egoyan is a remake of the French film Nathalie…, in which a woman (Moore) hires an escort (Seyfried) to test the fidelity of her husband (Liam Neeson). This naturally leads to dangerous complications — and (SMALL SPOILER ALERT) an affair between the two female characters.

“Well, the situation was very different,” Seyfried told MTV News on the Oscars red carpet. “Two very different stories and very different women.”

Moore’s character, for example, is not possessed by a demon. But that doesn’t make it any easier. “It’ll never be easier. … It’s easier with men for sure,” said Seyfried. “But the first kiss with anyone’s awkward. The scene between Julianne and myself was very, very intimate and very erotic, so it was definitely a little bit harder [than in 'Jennifer's Body'], I think, but necessary.”

Chloe hits theatres March 26.

(Photo by PR Photos)

Story provided by the Dish Information Corporation

The Hollywood Reporter says a script by late filmmaker John Hughes is generating interest in Hollywood and may be developed for a posthumous production.

Hughes directed several landmark films in the 1980s, including Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club. He was also a writer and producer, and was behind the Home Alone movies and 101 Dalmations. He died in August 2009 of a heart attack and was the subject of a touching tribute, given by the stars of his movies, at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Hughes retired from public life in 1994, but continued to write and The Hollywood Reporter says that, after his death, family members found piles of unpublished and unproduced material. The screenplay in question is titled Grisbys Go Broke and it reportedly follows a wealthy Chicago family that loses everything and is forced to move to the suburbs.

There was a report on Friday that Paramount, which has a long history with Hughes, was picking it up with plans to turn it into a family comedy but the studio later refuted the report and told THR that it is not negotiating to purchase. The implication, however, seems to be that someone is still expected to pick it up.

The last feature Hughes wrote was Paramount’s 2008 Owen Wilson comedy Drillbit Taylor. It began as a Hughes original but was rewritten by Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown. Hughes’ story credit appears under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes, the name he also used for 2002’s Maid in Manhattan.

(Image: Universal)

Both the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline Hollywood are reporting that Universal studios and Robert De Niro are developing a sequel to Midnight Run. The 1988 action comedy starred De Niro as bounty hunter, Jack Walsh, and Charles Grodin as Jack Walsh, a neurotic-mob-accountant-turned-embezzler on the run.

De Niro is producing and will reprise his role but Deadline says Grodin, who retired from acting in 2004 to become a broadcast journalist and political commentator, will not return.

He did, however, have a role in the 2007 Zach Braff comedy, The Ex, so he is not eschewing films altogether.

Timothy Dowling, writer of the Universal comedy Role Models, is crafting the script, which will reportedly pair De Niro with a younger comedic foil.

There have been three made for TV sequels — Another Midnight Run, Midnight Runaround and Midnight Run for Your Life — though these did not feature any of the principal characters. And Yaphet Kotto reprised the role of FBI agent, Alonzo Mosely, in 2008’s Witless Protection.

Those who have been anticipating the Miles Davis biopic, since it first went into development over ten years ago, may get some good news soon.

The long-in-development project is gaining momentum, according to TwentyFourBit.com. And Herbie Hanock will score the film, which stars Academy Award winner Don Cheadle.

TwentyFourBit points us toward a recent interview with YRB magazine, in which Davis’s son Erin Davis and nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr., said, “Herbie Hancock’s going to score it and Don Cheadle’s directing and starring,” later adding, “Don didn’t like the other writer that was attached to the movie, so there’s a new writer named Steven Vegelman that Don’s writing with. Once is the script is OK’d by the family, then we go into production.”

Then Cheadle recently told Parade magazine, “It’s been a long time coming, but we’re working on the script right now.”

Davis, a trumpet player, bandleader and composer, who died in 1991, is considered one of the greatest jazz legends of the 20th century. But that doesn’t mean he is the best known. Cheadle told Vibe magazine, “Miles Davis is a beloved artist, but not to the degree that a 17-year old would know who he is. Unfortunately, people don’t know the seeds. In my attempt to tell the story, I’m not trying to do some reverential all-of-us-bow-down-to-Miles-the-icon. I’m trying to present him as a man.”

And he added that he is “trying to make a movie that Miles Davis would want to make.”

Hancock played with Davis’s Second Great Quintet, beginning in 1963 and has gone on to become a jazz icon in his own right. He won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2008 with River: The Joni Letters.

There is no official word on when we might see the Davis movie but Cheadle said in his Vibe interview that, “We are coming right up on the end point. I think we are getting to the point where we may get some traction and get it going.”

Kathryn Bigelow made history as the first female Best Director for The Hurt Locker. Mo’Nique became only the fifth black woman to win an acting Oscar for her supporting role in Precious. Sandra Bullock got her first ever Oscar and it was the coveted Best Actress prize for The Blind Side, and Jeff Bridges was best actor for Crazy Heart.

Here is the list of winners at the 82nd annual Academy Awards.

-Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker.”

-Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart.”

-Actor in a Supporting Role: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds.”

-Actress in a Leading Role: Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side.”

-Actress in a Supporting Role: Mo’Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.”

-Animated Feature: “Up.”

-Art Direction: “Avatar.”

-Cinematography: “Avatar.”

-Costume Design: “The Young Victoria.”

-Directing: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker.”

-Documentary Feature: “The Cove.”

-Documentary Short: “Music by Prudence.”

-Film Editing: “The Hurt Locker.”

-Foreign Language Film: “El Secreto de Sus Ojos,” Argentina.

-Makeup: “Star Trek.”
- Music (Original Score): “Up,” Michael Giacchino.

-Music (Original Song): “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart,” Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.

-Short Film (Animated): “Logorama.”

-Short Film (Live Action): “The New Tenants.”

-Sound Editing: “The Hurt Locker.”

-Sound Mixing: “The Hurt Locker.”

-Visual Effects: “Avatar.”

-Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Geoffrey Fletcher, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.”

-Writing (Original Screenplay): Mark Boal, “The Hurt Locker.”