Butler's Script Sale of the Week...
January 28th, 2001
Some interesting sales this week. SUMMERLAND, the children's novel picked up by Miramax sounds intriquing. I'm dying to know how Joel Silver is going to approach WONDER WOMAN. Personally I hope they go the tounge-in-cheek route, but hey, if they can get us to take an invisible plane seriously than the more power to them.
My pick of the week, though, is the untitled Irish mob pitch by Chris Wilkinson and Steve Rivele that Irish director Jim Sheridan will be developing. The pitch concerns an Irish orphan brought to America during the Potato Famine in 1895. The orphan grows up to become a powerful politician with close ties to organized crime and we follow his life until 1955.
This project has a lot going for it. Firstly, Wilkinson and Rivele are quickly becoming a hot commodity in Hollywood. The pair wrote Oliver Stone's NIXON (1995) opus and more recently churned out the script for Michael Mann's hotly anticipated ALI (2001) biopic. The duo is proving that they're pros in adapting real life stories to the screen. While the Irish mob pitch is not a biopic (at least not as far as we know) it definitely has the feel of one from it's description. The writing team's adeptness at covering many years over the span of a feature length screenplay will be a valuable asset to this project.
Secondly, Irish director Jim Sheridan will be at the helm. Reports indicate that Sheridan had the idea for the project and he will have a hand in developing the script. He's already taken the liberty of insuring himself a story credit. Sheridan is also an old pro at bringing true stories to the screen. A writer/director, his first film was the critically acclaimed MY LEFT FOOT (1989) which chronicled the life of parpalegic Christy Brown. He also brought a real life story to the screen with IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (1993). His deft hand and Irish roots should give a genuine feel to this project. All that and he's also one hell of a film director as well.
Thirdly, none of these people involved have ever produced a mafia project. Hopefully they will be able to bring a freshness to a genre that so frequently plummets into cliche.
With Scorcese's Irish mob GANGS OF NEW YORK already in the pipeline, it'll be interesting to see how this one measures up. To use an annoying modern figure of speech: are the film Irish the new film Italians? We'll see ...
-- Edward Butler
My pick of the week, though, is the untitled Irish mob pitch by Chris Wilkinson and Steve Rivele that Irish director Jim Sheridan will be developing. The pitch concerns an Irish orphan brought to America during the Potato Famine in 1895. The orphan grows up to become a powerful politician with close ties to organized crime and we follow his life until 1955.
This project has a lot going for it. Firstly, Wilkinson and Rivele are quickly becoming a hot commodity in Hollywood. The pair wrote Oliver Stone's NIXON (1995) opus and more recently churned out the script for Michael Mann's hotly anticipated ALI (2001) biopic. The duo is proving that they're pros in adapting real life stories to the screen. While the Irish mob pitch is not a biopic (at least not as far as we know) it definitely has the feel of one from it's description. The writing team's adeptness at covering many years over the span of a feature length screenplay will be a valuable asset to this project.
Secondly, Irish director Jim Sheridan will be at the helm. Reports indicate that Sheridan had the idea for the project and he will have a hand in developing the script. He's already taken the liberty of insuring himself a story credit. Sheridan is also an old pro at bringing true stories to the screen. A writer/director, his first film was the critically acclaimed MY LEFT FOOT (1989) which chronicled the life of parpalegic Christy Brown. He also brought a real life story to the screen with IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (1993). His deft hand and Irish roots should give a genuine feel to this project. All that and he's also one hell of a film director as well.
Thirdly, none of these people involved have ever produced a mafia project. Hopefully they will be able to bring a freshness to a genre that so frequently plummets into cliche.
With Scorcese's Irish mob GANGS OF NEW YORK already in the pipeline, it'll be interesting to see how this one measures up. To use an annoying modern figure of speech: are the film Irish the new film Italians? We'll see ...
-- Edward Butler
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