Nate von Zumwalt

With last week’s semi-bizarre, fully nostalgia-inducing news that Bravo is on board to adapt a television series based on the ‘80s classic Heathers, we figured another edition of Sundance Alumni Updates was in store. Winona Ryder starred in the original Heathers, which screened at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and again at the ’89 Sundance Film Festival in Tokyo, a rapport that very few films can lay claim to. There’s more on the television adaptation here, a trailer below, and a collection of project updates involving recent Sundance alumni.

Cutter Hodierne
Fishing Without Nets (2012)

Hodierne’s Fishing Without Nets, the 2012 Grand Jury Prize Winner for Short Film, is set for a feature adaptation led by Brooklyn-based production company Vice Media. The short film centers around the lives of pirates in Somalia and was shot entirely on-the-ground in East Africa, making for a vérité aesthetic despite its fictional storyline. Read more from Variety about the feature-length adaptation here.

Drake Doremus
Like Crazy (2011)

Drake Doremus recently released the fifth in a scheduled six episodes for his online series The Beauty Inside, a co-marketing effort from Toshiba and Intel that solicits Facebook users to audition for roles. Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead star in one of the more remarkable attempts at invoking audience interaction for a social film. The Beauty Inside tells the story of Alex (Grace), a man afflicted with a condition that causes him to wake up each day in a new body, as he embarks on a relentless pursuit of his love interest, Leah (Winstead). See the first five episodes here: http://www.facebook.com/thebeautyinsidefilm

Amy Berg
West of Memphis (2012)

Amy Berg’s sobering 2012 SFF documentary, West of Memphis, roused the ire of audiences last January with its illuminating portrayal of the shoddy murder conviction of three Arkansas teenagers nearly two decades ago. It now looks like she’ll be bringing another sensational story to life with word that Berg is slated to direct the Jeff Buckley biopic Mystery White Boy, chronicling the late musician’s life and career cut short by a tragic drowning. Read more from IndieWire about further conjectures surrounding the film’s cast.

Derek Cianfrance
Blue Valentine (2010)

Director Derek Cianfrance stunned Park City audiences in 2010 with a pair of engrossing performances from Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in the jarring relationship drama Blue Valentine. Cianfrance most recently screened another Gosling-led drama (The Place Beyond the Pines) at TIFF earlier this month, and is now tasked with an adaptation for HBO of Sam Fussell’s memoir Muscle, about the author’s four-year foray into the obsessive world of bodybuilding. Read more.

Anthony Mackie
Half Nelson (2006), Night Catches Us (2010), 2012 Dramatic Competition Juror

Another update, another adaptation—sort of. Marvel Studios has apparently nabbed Sundance-favorite and all-around charmer Anthony Mackie for a role opposite Chris Evans in Captain America: Winter Soldier, a follow-up to the 2011 film The First Avenger. MTV has more on the casting here.