New Films in Production

[flyonthewall2983]

The New York Times visits the set of Ridley Scott's new film, a '70s crime film starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington. Check it out.

Seems like Ridley is doing another biographical crime drama after he's finished up with that one...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) -
Eric Bana and Terrence Howard are attached to star in "Factor X," a thriller about the capture of the so-called "BTK killer" in Wichita.

Dennis Rader murdered 10 people in and around Wichita, Kan., between 1974-91 and was finally caught in 2005, turning out to be a mild-mannered church leader. The acronym described his modus operandi, which was to bind, torture and kill.

"Factor X," which takes its name from what he described in taunting letters to the police as his motive for murder, tells how a young, black counterterrorism expert from Washington teamed up with a Wichita police detective, who spent his career trying to chase down the killer.

Bana will play the detective and Howard the counterterrorism expert.
Ridley Scott will produce the New Line project, and could also direct.

The script will be written by Gregory Allen Howard, who made a name for himself writing real-life inspirational sports dramas such as "Remember the Titans" and "Ali." Howard came across counterterrorism expert Stanley Campbell at a dinner party thrown by his cousin, a federal judge.

After Howard learned of Campbell's story, and how he invented a data reduction process to rule out suspects, he doggedly pursued the man for a year trying to get his life rights. Campbell eventually caved, partly because of Howard's promise to not make an exploitative movie.

Howard then got Bana on board, followed by actor Terrence Howard. Scott soon followed.

[Antoine Doinel]

From The NY Times today:

[quote]After Death, My Sweet: From an Idea by Kubrick, a New Film May Be Born

By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: October 31, 2006

Stanley Kubrick never threw anything away. On the other hand, he didn't have much of a filing system, and when he moved — permanently, it turned out — from Hollywood to London in 1962, a great many things went astray. Among them was the sole copy of a film treatment called “Lunatic at Large,â€

[jon]

“Post-Tarantino,â€

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From Variety by way of the Guardian:

Soderbergh plans Guevara double bill


Staff and agencies
Tuesday October 31, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Steven Soderbergh has long been planning to direct a biopic about Che Guevara. But it seems he is so passionate about his subject that he is planning not just one movie, but two.

According to Variety, the American director will shoot two movies about the life of the Latin American revolutionary. In addition to Guerrilla, which had been announced earlier this year, Soderbergh is to make another film called The Argentine.

Benicio Del Toro will play Guevara in both movies. Javier Bardem, Franka Potente and Benjamin Bratt are in talks to play key roles.

The Argentine will focus on the Cuban revolution, from the moment Fidel Castro, Guevara and other revolutionaries landed on the Caribbean island, until they toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista two years later.

Guerrilla will focus on the years following the Cuban revolution. It will begin with Che's trip to the UN headquarters in New York in 1964, until his death in the Bolivian mountains in 1967.

The films will not cover the formative years of Guevara's life, which were described in the acclaimed The Motorcycle Diaries, the 2004 movie by Walter Salles.

Soderbergh will shoot Guerrilla and The Argentine back to back, with most of the dialogue in Spanish.

The Traffic director has already shot most of the opening footage with Del Toro and Julia Ormond. The British actor is playing a television journalist who acted as an informal intermediary between John Kennedy's White House and Cuba.

Soderbergh has also shot a documentary while researching the project, with interviews with many who fought alongside Guevara in Cuba and Bolivia.

[Lino]

Some movies to look out for in the near future:

Cineclick adds high profile trio for AFM

SEOUL -- Korean sales house Cineclick Asia will unveil projects by South Korean helmers Kim Ki-duk, Kim Jee-woon and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf at the American Film Market, which kicks off Wednesday.

Fest veteran Kim Ki-duk will begin shooting his 14th film, "Breath," early next year. Pic, told with minimal dialogue, paints a love story between a criminal on death row and a woman who befriends him after catching her husband cheating.

Helmer Kim Jee-woon, best known for horror pic "A Tale of Two Sisters" and Cannes selection "A Bittersweet Life," has developed an idiosyncratic western set on the plains of Manchuria.

"The Good, the Bad, and the Weird" (working title) features local star Song Kang-ho ("The Host") as "the weird," and will begin shooting in spring in China, Mongolia and Russia. Cineclick is billing the work as helmer's most commercially accessible work to date.

Finally, Cineclick has secured rights to Makhmalbaf's "Two-Footed Horse" after the project won the Cineclick Asia Award at the 2006 Pusan Promotion Plan in South Korean earlier this month.

Story about the unlikely friendship between a poor boy and a rich lame boy who hires him as his "horse" is expected to open production in summer.

[Highway 61]

Not sure if this belongs here or in the Scorsese thread, but anyway, Marty's making a Rolling Stones concert film/documentary. The story from CHUD.com:

The film, as yet untitled, will focus on the band's current A Bigger Bang tour, as well as looking back at their history. Scorsese shot the Stones playing Sunday night at New York City's Beacon Theater for President Clinton's birthday; he's filming more footage there tonight. He has also shot the band playing recently in Austin, Texas.

Albert Maysles will be providing some of the footage, which is damn exciting as well – he has shot some backstage stuff already. Paramount has picked up the film, and they expect to distribute it at the end of 2007.

[flyonthewall2983]

from imdb.com:

Christopher Walken is to play Ozzy Osbourne in a new Hollywood movie. The Oscar winner will make a cameo role as the shock rocker in a new movie based on Motley Crue's 2001 autobiography The Dirt, Crue frontman Vince Neil has revealed. The book, fully titled The Dirt: Confessions Of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band, details the band's wild behavior. Osbourne toured with the band and appears in the book snorting a line of live ants and taking Lsd every day for a year. Val Kilmer is also lined up to play David Lee Roth in the film - but band members Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee will be played by unknown actors. Neil says, "How funny is that going to be. We're doing big, giant cameos with those people."

[Dylan]

Just a heads-up in connection with the "Cassandra's Dream" post. There will likely be more information about this in a month or two, but I will add here that in the interviews I cited in the "Cassandra's Dream" thread, Woody Allen adds that he will start filming his Barcelona project this December. It is rumored to be titled "Midnight in Barcelona."

[Fletch F. Fletch]

[quote="Fletch F. Fletch"]Wow, this could be good. Altho, Hollywood's already had a go at this book and failed to do anything with it. I remember when John Cusack and Nick Nolte were attached with Robert Richardson directing...

from CHUD:

[quote]JAMES ELLROY IS GETTING NARC-ED
10.29.06
By Devin Faraci
It's been five years between films for Joe Carnahan, the man who directed the modern classic undercover cop movie Narc; his new film, Smokin' Aces – a balls to the wall action madhouse unlike anything you've seen before, and with a killer cast – hits early next year. But it won't be another half decade before his next film hits, since Carnahan starts shooting an adaptation of one of James Ellroy's LA Quartet books next November.

“The film I'm doing next is White Jazz, the sequel to LA Confidential,â€

[Lino]

First infos on Almodovar's next project:

Looking to stick with his muse of the moment, Pedro Almodóvar recently suggested that La Piel que habito will be his next film and that there's a good chance Penélope Cruz would star. Cruz also starred in Almodóvar's 1999 pic All About My Mother, as well as this year's Volver. However, since the screenplay isn't finished and schedules still need to be worked out, nothing is currently set in stone.

La Piel que habito translates as The Skin I Inhabit.

[SalParadise]

WKW - Ye Wen
Neat site.

http://www.dianying.com/en/topics/inproduction.php

Note: 'Wang Jiawei' is the Mandarin name for none other than 'Wong Kar-Wai'.

http://www.dianying.com/en/topics/recentmovies.php

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Raimi wrapped up in the Shadow
Monday December 11, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Spider-Man director Sam Raimi is to bring comic book icon The Shadow to the big screen. The 1930s pulp hero was last in cinemas in 1994 in a version starring Alec Baldwin. However, audiences did not take to the movie and a second film was never commissioned.

Raimi will produce the film for Columbia Pictures through his Buckaroo Entertainment banner but will not taking on directorial duties. He is currently putting the finishing touches to Spider-Man 3, with Tobey Maguire as the webslinger and set for a summer 2007 release. However Maguire has failed to confirm he will appear in any future films beyond the next one and the franchise's future is now open to question. The Shadow, a crime fighter who had the power to cloud people's minds, was a huge figure in the annals of comic book superheroes. His catchline, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows," was made famous by the young Orson Welles, who voiced a popular radio serial. He was also the star of several films during the 1930s and 40s as well as two TV series in the early days of the gogglebox. Raimi has long been interested in bringing The Shadow back to the big screen. The character's influence can be clearly seen in the Evil Dead director's 1990 film, Darkman.

[Dylan]

Le Sens de la nuit: Lesson of darkness for Raoul Ruiz

With Asia Argento, Gaspard Ulliel, Jérémie Rénier, Louis Garrel, Sophie Auster, and Pascal Greggory, Chilean-born director Raoul Ruiz has brought together a top-notch cast for his next feature, "Le Sens de la nuit," which begins filming in Paris in January.

Scripted by Alexandre Astruc, Alain Majani d'Inguimber, Eric Neuhoff, and Anna Legueulier, the project is the screen adaptation of the eponymous 1998 thriller by Nicolas Bréhal.

A genuine ode to Paris at night and centred on marginalised characters who are saddened by life and have a worrying obsession for the nocturnal, Le Sens de la nuit intertwines several paths around a serial knife killer nicknamed "Gaspard de la Nuit" in the novel, a worshipper of women's bodies who believes he is to blame for the chaos in the world.

This threat interferes in the destinies of petty criminals Marge and Thomas, taxi driver Marius who takes photos for the police, Léo who overdoses himself, and rebel Sabine who vaunts herself at a nightclub; night owls who by accident find themselves at the heart of a dark battle between Good and Evil.

Produced by Majani d'Inguimbert for CMD Prods, Le Sens de la nuit carries a €3.97m budget. Shooting is expected to last 35 days, after which Ruiz will start on another project in the spring, Love and Virtue, a film on medieval wars fought by Charlemagne.

Sounds terrific. I guess we can expect it to hit theatres/festivals winter of 2007.

From De Palma a la mod:

According to Production Weekly, Brian De Palma is preparing to begin work in April on Redacted, "a film based on the recent events surrounding the rape and murder of a 14-year old Iraqi girl, and the killing of three of her family members by four US soldiers." The film will have obvious parallels with De Palma's 1989 Vietnam film Casualties Of War, but what seems most exciting about the project is its proposed use of various types of footage: according to Production Weekly, "the film's narrative will be told using a mixture of video from news broadcasts, documentary footage, trial coverage, YouTube posts and excerpts from one of the soldier's video blogs." Sounds incredible... Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical is suggesting that De Palma's film is taking a cue in technique from Stephen Frear's The Queen, which mixes news and documentary footage with fictional actors to tell a true-to-life tale. (However, Bartyzel mistakenly states that De Palma's Casualties Of War was a work of total fiction.)

[exte]

The King of the World returns...

Cameron to follow 'Titanic' with 3D 'Avatar'

By Anne Thompson

Jan 9, 2007
James Cameron is set to direct "Avatar," his first dramatic feature since his Oscar-winning blockbuster "Titanic" in 1997, it was announced Monday by Fox Filmed Entertainment chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman. Cameron will start principal photography on "Avatar" in April for a summer 2009 release.

Cameron has already spent years in research and development on the multiple processes needed to create this $200 million hybrid of live action and animation, and has already shot 10 to 11 minutes of footage. "I've been the busiest unemployed director in Hollywood," he said. "We think we're going to blow people away. We want to throw you to the back wall of the theater. My goal is to rekindle those crazy mystical moments my generation felt when we first saw '2001: A Space Odyssey,' or the next generation's 'Star Wars.' It took me 10 years to find something hard enough."

Partly through its work on six documentary features, Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment team has researched a groundbreaking mix of live-action cinematography and virtual photorealistic production techniques for "Avatar," which will feature virtual characters filmed for 3D release in a new digital 3D format.

Cameron has been lobbying for exhibitors around the country to adopt more digital projection systems. About 300-400 are in place now, he estimated, and he expects some 1,000 by year's end. He anticipates that 1,500 -2,000 digital 3D theaters will exist by the film's 2009 release. Cameron said he likes Real D cinema system that has been used for films like "Chicken Little" and "Monster House," but is open to any system that can play the film.

"Avatar" will mark a return for Cameron to the sci-fi action adventure genre. Written by Cameron, who first wrote an 80-page treatment 11 years ago, "Avatar" is the story of a wounded ex-marine who is unwillingly sent to settle and exploit the faraway planet Pandora. He gets caught up in battle for survival by the planet's inhabitants, called Na'vis, and falls in love with one of them.

Cameron had been developing another project, "Battle Angel Alita," but when that script didn't come together after many drafts, he went into his script drawer and dusted off "Avatar" for the first time in five years. He started designing the movie back in May 2005, he said.

Cameron will continue to develop "Battle Angel" as a possible "Project 880," the title he uses as a cover for upcoming projects.

For "Avatar," Cameron will use image-based performance capture techniques similar to those used by such films as "Superman Returns" and "King Kong," and a real-time virtual camera system, which will blend dramatic performances and CG.

For the film's lead role, Jack Sully, Cameron sought a new face. After global screen tests, he selected Australian actor Sam Worthington, who has starred in "Somersault" and "Dirty Deeds." "He's a tough guy, a young Russell Crowe," Cameron said. "They grow them differently over there."

Zoe Saldana ("The Terminal," "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl") will portray the local alien woman with whom Jake gets involved. She will be a CG character, while Sully will exist in both human and CG or "avatar" form. Both actors have signed on for possible future installments as well, because Cameron and Fox see "Avatar" as a potential franchise. Other casting will be announced shortly.

The highly competitive race for the assignment to supervise the film's visual effects went to Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning visual effects house Weta Digital ("The Lord of the Rings" trilogy). "Joe Lettieri and his team have a passion for fantasy filmmaking," Cameron said. "And they met us half-way on the price."

"Avatar" will be produced by Cameron and Jon Landau for Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment. Principal photography -- scheduled to last only 31 days-- will take place in and around Los Angeles, and in New Zealand. Live action will be shot using the proprietary Fusion digital 3D camera system developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.

Cameron and Fox first joined forces in 1985 for the sc-fi classic "Aliens." Next came "The Abyss," which revolutionized visual effects technology; and "True Lies," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 1996, Fox greenlighted Cameron's "Titanic," which became the biggest blockbuster of all time, earning $1.8 billion worldwide, and winning eleven Academy Awards, including best picture.

More...

Director Cameron to shoot again
"Titanic" auteur commits to long-planned "Avatar" project.
By John Horn, Times Staff Writer
2:20 PM PST, January 8, 2007

Nearly 10 years after Jim Cameron made "Titanic" the record-breaking filmmaker said Monday he's finally ready to step behind the cameras again.

Cameron's "Avatar," a science-fiction adventure tale set 150 years in the future, will start production this spring, with a scheduled summer 2009 release by 20th Century Fox. For now, Cameron's other contemplated feature, "Battle Angel," is on hold.

Cameron actually outlined "Avatar" before he made "Titanic," but didn't have the filmmaking tools to make it. "It was just too ambitious," Cameron said. "But now the technology has caught up."

After flip-flopping between "Avatar" and "Battle Queen," Cameron said he made his decision to proceed with the former film after completing a five-day camera test a year ago. "I could vividly picture how we would shoot the film," the writer-director said.

The movie, which combines live action and animation, will be made with some of the same performance-capture animation techniques used in movies such as "Monster House" and "The Polar Express." Cameron says his process will offer numerous refinements, especially in its depiction of facial expressions and physical action. The movie will be filmed with digital cameras and shown in 3-D theaters.

"The fundamental difference between the way we're doing [performance capture] and the way it's been done is that it's really director-centric now," Cameron said. Rather than wait for months of post-production to see how a final shot turns out, Cameron will be able to see in nearly real time how an actor and the environment combine.

Since he made 1997's "Titanic," the highest-grossing movie in Hollywood history and the winner of the best picture Oscar, Cameron has made several documentaries. In both "Ghosts of the Abyss" and "Aliens of the Deep," Cameron experimented with new 3-D camera systems, new versions of which will be employed on "Avatar."

Cameron said 95% of the film unfolds on Pandora, a moon of a giant gas planet. Pandora features a lush tropical forest rich in striking plant and animal species, and its inhabitants have been targeted for exploitation.

While much of the acting will be recorded in 31 days of performance-capture photography on a high-tech Playa Vista stage, "Avatar" also will feature live-action, which will be cut together with the animation. "Ideally, the audience won't know where one ends and the next starts," Cameron said.

When Cameron made "Titanic," he cast at its center two actors without much name recognition at the time - Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Both, of course, went on to be huge stars.

For "Avatar," Cameron has cast two more under-the-radar performers: 30-year-old Aussie actor Sam Worthington ("The Great Raid," "Hart's War") will play the film's hero, Jake, and 28-year-old Zoe Saldana ("Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "Drumline") as his love interest

New York Times piece...

‘Titanic' Director Joins Fox on $200 Million Film
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 — James Cameron, the director whose “Titanicâ€

[flyonthewall2983]

Wow, I hope Jim can pull it off. It's great that he's back in the sci-fi genre again.

From imdb.com:

Director Michael Mann has entered the race against Johnny Depp to make a film about Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB agent who was fatally poisoned in London last year. Mann's film is based on the unpublished book Death Of A Dissident, which is being written by Litvinenko's widow Marina and Alex Goldfarb, who reportedly had close ties with the spy. The movie will focus on the Russian power structure enforced by the KGB and its successor the FRS and the "Wild West capitalism" that followed glasnost, with Litvinenko caught in the middle. Meanwhile, Depp's production company and Warner Bros have just announced plans to make a film based on the book Sasha's Story: The Life And Death Of A Russian Spy, which is currently being written by New York Times London Bureau Chief Alan Cowell. British police are still investigating Litvinenko's death, after traces of lethal radiation were found in his body when he was admitted to hospital three weeks before he died.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From LatinoReview.com:

John Carter Is Lost
Date: January 17, 2007

By: Ronnie Adams
Source: TMZ


TMZ.com is reporting that director Jon Favreau, and producers Sean Daniel, Jim Jacks and AICN's Harry Knowles have left the production of John Carter of Mars. And to top it off, it looks like the production will leaving Paramount and heading over the hills to the Walt Disney Co.

Quint got an exclusive with Harry over at AICN and he has a different story about the production, which has been in a holding pattern in development hell for quite some time. According to Harry, he and the rest of the crew were pretty much fired when Paramount decided to not re-new the rights to Harry and Co. Of course, Harry was a bit more eloquent about his words but it is what it is.

Soon after the announcement, CHUD jumped some journalistic hurdles and found Producer Don Murphy on the Vancouver set of While She Was Out. Don told Devin that he's negotiating his own deal with Walden Media and part of his deal would be to guarantee a production start date within 18 months, which Disney can't match. Being that they are planning on shelving production until next decade. Seriously.

Being in the peer circle I'm in, I hear many things and the production problems John Carter has had haven't exactly been a secret. It was almost a year ago that I heard there was production trouble and that it was only a matter of the rights expiring before this announcement was made. It seems like Don Murphy is now in the fabled catbirds seat now.

And just a sidenote, since when is TMZ.com breaking news like this?

[dadaistnun]

With any luck, those two Litvinenko projects will become one. I think Depp & Mann would be a good match for one another, and the prospect of Mann doing some sort of Insider-like film again is enticing.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

The role Pacino was born to play?

From LatinoReview.com:

Hollywood Reporter - Al Pacino will play legendary artist, Salvador Dali in Dali & I: The Surreal Story. The movie will span three decades between the 60s and 80s. These are the days post Dali greatness but during the height of his most whackiness. The story also will focus on a mentor-protege relationship between Dali and Stan Lauryssens, a young art dealer.

[Len]

Somewhat old news, but I forgot to post this earlier. Clooney is producing a Sci-fi channel miniseries based on Neal Stephenson's wonderful novel, The Diamond Age: A Young Lady's Primer.

SCI FI Channel unveiled a new slate of programs in development, which includes shows from executive producers George Clooney, Darren Star and Mark Burnett. SCI FI made the announcement Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson's best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.

Link

Absolutely fantastic news. The Diamond Age is easily amongst the finest science fiction books of the 90s and one of the best works Stephenson has written (although I admit I'm more of a sucker for the excess and insanity of Snow Crash). I can easily see this becoming a fine series, as I've trust in Clooney and the screenplay is written by Stephenson himself.

[dadaistnun]

#-o

Columbia Pictures has picked up the thriller "Le Voyeur" for Will Smith and James Lassiter to produce says Reuters.

Penned by Massy Tadjedin, it centers on a man who returns to the Caribbean island of his youth and becomes a suspect in the murder of a teenage girl that was committed two days after his arrival.

The story is based on a 1955 French novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Nearly five years ago the project was set up at Universal Pictures with Kevin Misher and Akiva Goldsman producing.

The less than $10 million budgeted film is currently shooting in New York.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

From IGN:

Fletch to Film This Summer
The writer/director of the revamped comedy franchise discusses his plans.
by Eric Goldman

January 18, 2007 - At the TCA (Television Critics Association) Press Tour this week, Executive Producer Bill Lawrence and star Zach Braff were on hand to discuss their series Scrubs. Lawrence used the occasion to announce that he is strongly considering doing a seventh season of the comedy, which led to the question of where this left the status of his previously announced Fletch film.

"Whether or not Fletch happens depends on whether or not I can get someone to star in it," Lawrence responded, before looking pointedly towards Braff, who was sitting next to him. It has already been announced that Braff will be starring in the title role, so Lawrence immediately let us know he was joking.

"I'm going to shoot it," Lawrence continued. "Film it, write and direct Fletch. I'm doing it this hiatus [from Scrubs]. Already handed the script in. That's the coolest thing about TV, is you get that couple of months off to do it."

Asked if there might be any Scrubs influences in Fletch, in terms of the style of the film, Lawrence replied, "Well, there is going to be a voiceover and crazy fantasies," though this too was obviously said in a tongue in cheek manner. "I don't know. I'm going to try, and I think that you guys would all mock me if it was a lot like Scrubs. I'm one of those guys that can do every line of the original Fletch movie, along with 60 other homophobic guys that were in my fraternity. So I'm such a huge fan of the books and of the original movie that I'm going to try to stay true to the novels a little bit."

[Lino]

Penelope Cruz to star in new Woody Allen film

MADRID (Reuters) - Oscar-nominated Spanish actress Penelope Cruz is to star in the new Woody Allen film, to be shot this summer in Barcelona, newspaper El Pais reported on Friday.

Citing Cruz's agent, El Pais said the film was still without a title but that the sought-after actress would speak in Spanish and in English.

Allen has shot two of his last features in London -- "Match Point" and "Scoop" -- and announced some time ago that he would film in Barcelona, without giving further details.

His latest film, "Cassandra's Dream," starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, has yet to be released.

Reuters Pictures
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Cruz, from Madrid, is currently nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her leading role in Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's "Volver," for which she has won Spain's top cinema prize, a Goya

[exte]

WOW. Penelope Cruz starring in a Woody Allen film. Everyone remember how sexy Scarlett Johansson was in Match Point? I cannot wait. Wow!

[Lino]

From Twitch:

According to Screendaily Lars Von Trier will collaborate with prolific screenwriter and director Anders Thomas Jensen on the script for his upcoming horror film Antichrist.

[Antoine Doinel]

I'm just curious who would give Polanksi - a filmmaker who can't even come to North America to do any press - $130 million dollars to do what is ostensibly a disaster pic. Moreover, a director whose films have never grossed more than $32 million dollars.

Is this going to be his Dante's Peak/Alexander?

Polanski propels 'Pompeii'

Director to tackle biggest project yet
By MICHAEL FLEMING, DADE HAYES

Roman Polanski's next directing effort will be his biggest undertaking yet in terms of scale, subject and budget.
"Pompeii" is a dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of Mt. Vesuvius just before and during its eruption. The budget is projected to be $130 million, the director said.

It is based on the bestseller of the same name by "Fatherland" novelist Robert Harris, who is writing the script. Filming will begin in Italy this summer.

"Pompeii" will be produced by Polanski and Robert Benmussa of RP Productions, along with Alain Sarde. It will draw on private funding sources, as was the case with many of the director's previous projects.

"It will be handled like our last two films," Polanski said, "as an independent European production." No studio or distribution partners as yet have been approached, he said.

Pic's protagonist is a young engineer who has to repair an enormous aqueduct whose destruction threatens the Roman Empire. He finds himself enmeshed in politics and romance. The film takes place over three days and the final act is the volcanic eruption and the destruction of the aqueduct, which stretched 60 miles and served hundreds of thousands of people.

"I got seduced by the writing," Polanski told Daily Variety. "In general terms, when someone tells me to make a movie set in ancient times, I say it's not my cup of tea. But I liked that it was a thriller and I have read all of his books and there is such minute detail. He goes very far into the research."

Plus, the "Chinatown" helmer added, "There is corruption in connection with water."

Polanski, who won an Oscar for "The Pianist," last directed "Oliver Twist." He also played a supporting role in the Brett Ratner-directed "Rush Hour 3" for New Line.

Telling a period story of a volcano's eruption will take Polanski into event movie territory. Though "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown" were certainly landmarks, they were before the term "tentpole" came into use, and Polanski's top-grossing release in the years since has been $32 million for "The Pianist."

"It will be very dependent on visual effects," he noted. "I don't like to brandish effects, but the truth is that there have been a lot. 'Pianist' had about 200 CGI effects and 'Oliver Twist' had at least 400. It's always a challenge to do something a little different, but that's what keeps me going."

Polanski is repped by ICM.