Elston Gunn's WEEKLY SCRIPT REPORT (Major Sales, Events, and other News!)
March 18th, 2001
- Will Gluck will write a remake of the 1961 Jerry Lewis pic THE ERRAND BOY for Spyglass Entertainment and the Jacobson Co.
- Josh Schwartz will adapt Bill Flanagan's 2000 novel A&R into a feature script for Warner Bros. and producer Bill Gerber. It's about a young exec who gets a job at a big record label and discovers the tough environment there.
- Several studios are vying for a pitch by screenwriter Eric Guggenheim (TRIM, MOVE) about the American hockey team's victory of the then-unbeatable Soviet hockey team to win the gold medal in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
- Crime novelist James Ellroy will write his first original screenplay, 77, an urban crime thriller for Dick Wolf to produce. The story will be told through the eyes of a pair of police partners, one black and one white, as they are involved in two events from May 1974: the unsolved murder of Los Angeles police officer Mike Edwards and the nationally televised shoot out in South Central L.A. between the LAPD and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
- Jerry Weintraub Prods. grabbed the comedy pitch FISHIN' MAGICIAN from George B. White III. Danny Jacobson will co-write the script with White. It's a mob comedy that centers on a mobster who hides out in Alabama, but his cover may be blown when he catches the largest bass in a national tournament.
- Paramount Pictures pieked up the romantic dramedy script PERSONAL SHOPPING by Tim Sullivan, who will also direct. It follows an American in London who loses his bags and gets a female personal shopper at an upscale department store to help him out with a new wardrobe.
- Heather Hach will write a remake of the 1977 Walt Disney pic FREAKY FRIDAY.
- Disney picked up an urban coming-of-age pitch based on an idea by Lisa Bonet, who is attached to star in and co-produce. Monique Matthews will write the script for 3 Arts Entertainment about a mysterious boarder who changes the lives of two wayward teens in Harlem.
- Universal Pictures bought an untitled reindeer comedy pitch from Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (SEE SPOT RUN, MTV's "The State") that will center on how Santa's reindeer came together. The project will be made in the style of BABE.
- Producer Mark Canton and Senator Entertainment are in final talks to buy the spec CARUSO: THE KING OF TENORS, a biopic of the famed opera singer Enrico Caruso, written by Stefano Gallini. It will be set in New York at the turn of the 20th century and focus on the tragic life of Caruso, which included a scandalous love affair with his sister-in-law.
My pick of the week is the Eric Guggenheim 1980 Olympic hockey script -- as long as they play it straight and avoid the cliched Hollywood treatment. It could be great. The Caruso pic sounds promising as well.
-- Elston Gunn
(Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety)
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