Meanwhile, Charles Sturridge, who directed the magnificent translation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited for television, is already shooting Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread. Sturridge has lined up a cast of Forster veterans that includes Judy Davis (A Passage to India), Rupert Graves (Maurice and A Room With a View) and Helena Bonham Carter (A Room With a View).
GROWING UP. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was the sleeper hit of summer '89, with a $130 million gross that had many Hollywood trend-watchers scratching their heads. Some suggested that a factor in the Disney comedy's success was ''counter-programming": Honey was released on the same weekend as Batman, and could be considered a lighthearted family alternative to the dark megahit epic.
In about 18 months, we'll discover if lightning can strike twice. The inevitable sequels to Honey and Batman are in the pipeline, with both due in the summer of 1992. Perhaps superstitiously, the producers of Honey 2 plan to release their picture on whatever weekend Batman 2 opens.
GOING SOUTH. Kevin Costner, whose contribution to the western genre, Dances With Wolves, arrived Wednesday, is taking his production company south for its next project. Costner, who directed and starred in Dances, will serve as executive producer of China Moon, a romantic suspense-thriller that is his fledgling company's second venture. The film casts Ed Harris as a small-town Florida detective who becomes involved with a wealthy widow and gets implicated in a murder. Cinematographer John Bailey gets his first chance at
directing, courtesy of Costner.
IN BRIEF. John Hughes, writer and producer of Home Alone, has come up with the adventurous pairing of Sylvester Stallone and John Candy for a comedy he
plans to film in Chicago next summer. The movie is called Bartholomew vs. Neff and chronicles the breakup of the long friendship of an ex-baseball player (Stallone) and his neighbor, a banker (Candy). . . . John Frankenheimer will direct Lure of Darkness, a mystery set in an economically depressed part of the deep South. . . . Director John McNaughton, who made such a gruesome and effective feature debut with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, will film Mad Dog and Glory, a New York crime thriller written by Richard Price. Price wrote the script for Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money.
