SCULLIBUNDO
Banned
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/18/steven-spielberg-abraham-lincoln-biopic
I think this is great. I think this might force Stevie to get his ass into gear on Lincoln.
Article is more than a week old, but I couldn't find any thread on it and this is the first I've heard of it.
Steven Spielberg's plan for an Abraham Lincoln biopic, with Liam Neeson in the title role, is under threat from a rival project by fellow Oscar-winner Robert Redford, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Their Risky Business blog reports that Redford is planning a film centred around the assassination of the US president by actor and Confederacy sympathiser John Wilkes Booth. The tale, to be titled The Conspirator, would focus on the story of Mary Surratt, allegedly one of Booth's aides.
Surratt ran a boarding house in Washington and is alleged to have supplied Wilkes Booth with weapons at her tavern as he attempted to make a getaway after shooting the president at Ford's Theater in 1865. She was eventually convicted and hanged for conspiring to kill the president. Redford's film will also feature a young Union lawyer named Frederick Aiken who comes to believe that Surratt is innocent after being appointed to defend her.
Redford is said to be chasing James McAvoy for one of the lead roles. The Sundance film festival founder aims to shoot in the autumn - long before Spielberg looks likely to begin work on his long-gestating project - from a screenplay by James Solomon, writer of US TV series The Bronx is Burning.
Hollywood has a history of getting itchy feet when two rival biopics pop up at the same time. Pierce Brosnan's plan for a Dylan Thomas biopic was partly scuppered by the emergence of The Edge of Love, released last year. And when two similar films do make it to the box office, one tends to suffer: Toby Jones won plaudits for his portrayal of Truman Capote in 2006's Infamous, but it was Philip Seymour Hoffman who took home the Oscar that year for his portrayal of the writer in Capote, which beat its rival into cinemas by nearly a year.
I think this is great. I think this might force Stevie to get his ass into gear on Lincoln.
Article is more than a week old, but I couldn't find any thread on it and this is the first I've heard of it.