My Publicist Note Book

Roughly two minutes into watching  Ocean’s 8,  you get the idea that this movie isn’t just going to be about con artists who happen to be women — this movie is going to be about  fashion . In one of its first scenes ,  the titular Debbie Ocean, played by Sandra Bullock, is fresh out of prison and back in the glittering evening gown in which she was arrested five years prior. Her first stop? Bergdorf Goodman, where she engages in the film’s first taste of the scammery to come: Ocean picks up a few beauty products, brings them to a different counter and asks to return them all.  No,  she doesn’t have the receipt, she says, as if anyone would dare demand one of her, and after a heated back-and-forth with the salesperson, she sighs and says she’ll just keep them after all. “Can I at least have a bag?” she asks, before walking out, totally inconspicuously carrying a few hundred bucks’ worths of department store skin care. It was the first of a few ...

Rihanna and Anne Hathaway are in negotiation to join “Oceans Eight,” the all-female reboot of “Oceans Eleven.” Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, and Mindy Kaling, who had previously been linked to the Warner Bros. And Village Roadshow co-production, are leading the ensemble. Nora Lum (better known by her rap name Awkwafina) has also boarded the spinoff from director Gary Ross (“The Hunger Games”). The film, led by Bullock, will follow a similar path to the George Clooney-starter about a group of thieves and cons who try to pull off a major heist. Ross said in June that the pic continues the “Oceans Eleven” trilogy, which also starred Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. “It’s a pretty similar tone. You know, Steven Soderbergh and I are incredibly close friends, and we would not have done this if we weren’t. I don’t think he would’ve wanted anyone to do it if we weren’t,” he said. “This is very much an extension and a continuation.”...