User:Wildroot/Spiel

Major contributors: Wildroot and Alientraveller

• Robopocalypse
• Pirate Latitudes
• The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Lincoln
• Oldboy
• The 39 Clues
• Chocky
• Interstellar
• The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and a remake of West Side Story
• American Snipe
• Matt Helm
• Harvey
• Indiana Jones 5
• Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic
• Moses: Gods and Kings
• The BFG

DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film rights to Michael Crichton's final tome "Pirate Latitudes" for Steven Spielberg to produce and potentially direct. David Koepp will adapt for the bigscreen. Crichton completed the period action-adventure before his death last November. Crichton's final manuscript, which HarperCollins plans to publish on Nov. 24, was found in completed form by Crichton's assistant. Set in 1665, "Pirate Latitudes" revolves around a daring plan to infiltrate Port Royal, Jamaica, one of the world's richest and most notorious cities, and raid a Spanish galleon filled with treasure. Spielberg's next directing project is "Harvey," a co-production between DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox. Pic is based on Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a man who befriends a 6½-foot-tall invisible rabbit. Production is set to begin early next year.^[1]

McBride

• 120: Rear Window fan
• 128: Color Purple and Kubrick fan
• 170-177: Night Gallery
• 177-179: Snow White and early Sugarland
• 180-182: Unproduced, Ace Eli
• 199-207: Duel
• 208: Something Evil, Sugarland and McKlusky
• 209-210: Savage
• 211-Clearwater
• 211-224: Sugarland
• 225: Sugar/Jaws
• 227-240: Jaws
• 24) : Lucky Lady
• 241-260: Jaws and Jaws II
• 294: Amy-Star Wars and Carrie
• 96: Pirate movie, Negro Baseball, Magic, 12Angry Men
• 297: Tank
• 298-300: Hold Your Hand, After School/Growing Up, 1941
• 300-309: 1941
• 326-336: E.T.
• 336-340: Poltergeist
• 340-341: Gremlins
• 341-353: Twilight Zone
• 365-378: Color Purple
• 380: Studio offers
• 396-398: Empire of the Sun
• 393: Schindler's List
• 398, 400-403: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• 405: Amy's roles
• 406-409: Always

Duel: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,316077,00.html Jaws: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,314589,00.html

Mid-late 1973

• Spielberg was close direct The Taking of Pelham One Two Three for United Artists, but impressed with Joseph Sargent's work on White Lightning, the studio gave the position to Sargent.^[2]

• David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck offered Spielberg MacArthur, but he rejected the film because he was wary of the logistical problems involved in staging World War II and the Korean War. Zanuck thinks he "just didn't care for the subject".^[2]

• Around this time Spielberg turned down a script given to him by an A-list actor because he didn't think the actor was right for the role.^[2]

• In mid-1973 Spielberg approached Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz on doing a film about the early life of Thomas Crapper, similar to Young Tom Edison (1940). Huyck and Katz wrote a film treatment titled Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper, based on Wallace Reyburn's 1969 book of the same name. Huyck recalled, "we gave it to our mutual agent, Guy McElwaine, who said, 'Steve, if this is the kind of movie you want to do, I don't want to be your agent.'"^[2]

• Spielberg considered directing Paul Schrader's semi-autobiographical screenplay Taxi Driver. In the end, Martin Scorsese directed the film, though Spielberg made minor suggestions on the rough cut.^[2]

James Bond and Superman

• In late-1973 United Artists approached Spielberg for a film.^[3] Spielberg, aware they held the film rights for James Bond, offered to direct one of the films. Producer Albert R. Broccoli responded Spielberg was too inexperienced.^[4] Spielberg said George Lucas offered him Raiders of the Lost Ark as something "that was even better than James Bond".^[5] After seeing Schindler's List, Broccoli mailed Spielberg, congratulating him on his "masterpiece". Spielberg jokingly responded "Well can I now direct a Bond movie?"^[4]

• During the filming of Jaws, Spielberg expressed interest in directing Superman. Producer Ilya Salkind was enthusiastic to hire Spielberg, but his father Alexander was skeptical, feeling it was best to wait for the release "of that fish movie of his". Jaws was released with box office success, prompting the producers to offer Spielberg the position, but he was already committed to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.^[6]

• Night Skies^[7]

• Barbra Streisand offered Spielberg to direct Yentl in 1979. Streisand made it as her directing debut in 1983.^[8]

• Dick Tracy

• Before taking E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to Universal Pictures, Spielberg tried to sell the studio on a musical titled Reel to Reel, which he had been developing with Gary David Goldberg. It was "a semi-autobiographical original story by Spielberg about a young director making his first movie, a science fiction musical. One of the main characters was based on Sidney Sheinberg. While in London working on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Goldberg wrote the script. Spielberg planned to direct Reel to Reel after Raiders, but Universal did not like his pitch, thus Spielberg did E.T. By 1983 Spielberg took the project to Columbia Pictures as producer and Michael Cimino directing. Reel to Reel never materialized.^[9]

• Spielberg originally planned to produce Empire of the Sun with David Lean as director. When Lean dropped out Spielberg took over. In the mid-1980s, Spielberg agreed to produce a film adaption of Nostromo for Lean as director. In February 1987 Spielberg and Lean experienced creative differences. Christopher Hampton, who wrote the script for Nostromo said Spielberg withdrew from the project "because he could see there would be some sort of fight between him and David and he wanted to avoid that". Lean continued preparing the film until his death in 1991.^[10]

• Big^[11]

• Rain Man^[12]

• Spielberg announced in 1989 that he planned to make a film dealing with his childhood years in Cincinnati, Ohio, from a script by his sister Anne, I'll Be Home. The movie would have to be shot on location, he said, Because "there's nothing in L.A. that looks like Cincinnati, nothing."^[13]

• In 1990 Spielberg announced he was planning a Howard Hughes biopic with a script by Bo Goldman and Warren Beatty in the lead role.^[14] In 2004, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator was released.

• For years, Spielberg's animation studio Amblimation had been working on an film version of Cats.^[15]

• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

• Producer Scott Rudin considered Spielberg as director for The Truman Show before Peter Weir was hired.^[16]
• The Notebook
• Memoirs of a Geisha

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

• Spielberg wanted to depict Charles Lindbergh's life story, but abandoned it when he learnt the man was an anti-semite and fascist sympathizer.^[17]

• Spielberg signed to direct Big Fish in August 2000,^[18] and he had John August write two drafts with Jack Nicholson in mind to play Edward Bloom. Tim Burton took over the project as Spielberg became distracted.^[19]

• Memoirs of a Geisha

• The Trial of the Chicago 7

• http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117882116

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., whose father produced the 1947 film adaptation, conceived the idea of doing a remake in 1994 with Jim Carrey in mind for the title role. Walt Disney Pictures was enthusiastic to purchase the remake rights, but Goldwyn instead chose New Line Cinema,^[20] who held a positive working relationship with Carrey on Dumb and Dumber and The Mask.^[21] The studio bought the rights in 1995 with the understanding that The Samuel Goldwyn Company would be involved in creative decisions.^[22] Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz turned in the first draft of the screenplay in July 1997. Ron Howard entered negotiations to direct that same month, as well as cover producing duties with Brian Grazer and Imagine Entertainment.^[23] Howard and Imagine Entertainment eventually left the project in favor of EDtv,^[20] and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty languished in development hell over the challenges of using a contemporary storyline.^[21]

In May 1999 New Line hired Mask director Chuck Russell to rewrite the script and serve as Howard's replacement. Filming was set to begin in early-2000, but was pushed back.^[21] Around this time, Peter Tolan worked on rewrites.^[20] In May 2001 Goldwyn filed a lawsuit against New Line over breach of contract purposes. Goldwyn claimed that the studio extended their 1995 deal until May 2001, but then announced that it wanted to transfer the rights for the remake to another company and have Goldwyn surrender his creative input.^[22] In November 2002 New Line was forced to revert the film rights back to Goldwyn, who won his lawsuit and took the property to Paramount Pictures.^[22] During pre-production discussions between Paramount and DreamWorks on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (which starred Carrey), Steven Spielberg, head of DreamWorks, rekindled interest in working with Carrey; the duo previously considered Meet the Parents, but the outing fell apart.^[20] In May 2003 Spielberg agreed to direct,^[20] and brought in DreamWorks to co-finance The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Paramount.^[24]

By November, Zach Helm was rewriting the script,^[25] but Spielberg and DreamWorks vacated the film in April 2004 in favor of War of the Worlds and Munich. "The goal is to go back to the short story and capture not only the content but the original spirit," producer John Goldwyn (son of Samuel) told The Hollywood Reporter. Richard LaGravenese entered discussion to write a new script following Spielberg's departure.^[26] Sam Goldwyn commented that LaGravenese's script had a momentous and unique approach compared to others. "I'd always felt that unless we got a great script, the movie disintegrates into a series of wonderful gags," Goldwyn explained. "Writers always fixated on that. ... (Richard) worked for 10 months on umpteen drafts, and he solved it."^[27] In March 2005 Paramount hired Mark Waters to direct LaGravenese's script for Walter Mitty,^[28] but Carrey had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.^[27] He was replaced by Owen Wilson.^[29]

Despite not having a final budget, Paramount scheduled a December 12, 2005 start date because their option on the remake rights was to end one week later; they would lose the rights if they did not start filming before December 20.^[27] However, Wilson dropped out in October 2005 over creative differences. The Hollywood Reporter also speculated that Walter Mitty began to falter after Paramount failed to cast a female lead to star opposite Wilson. Scarlett Johansson had reportedly emerged as the front-runner after screen testing with Wilson earlier in October, but a deal was never signed with the actress.^[30] Paramount executives Brad Grey and Gail Berman decided to put Walter Mitty in turnaround in November 2005.^[31] Goldwyn found favor at 20th Century Fox and, in May 2007, it was announced that Mike Myers was attached to star in the title role. Jay Kogen was hired to write s new script that will be specifically tailored for Myers.^[32]

• Steven Spielberg: A Biography
• Steven Spielberg: Interviews
• Variety
• Entertainment Weekly
• IGN
• http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117471892.html?categoryid=3&cs=1
• http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117886717.html?categoryid=10&cs=1

Spielberg's first important theatrical film was The Sugarland Express, made in 1974, a time when gifted auteurs like Scorsese, Altman, Coppola, De Palma and Malick ruled Hollywood. Their god was Orson Welles, who made the masterpiece Citizen Kane entirely without studio interference, and they too wanted to make the Great American Movie. But a year later, with Jaws, Spielberg changed the course of modern Hollywood history. Jaws was a hit of vast proportions, inspiring executives to go for the home run instead of the base hit. And it came out in the summer, a season the major studios had generally ceded to cheaper exploitation films. Within a few years, the Jaws model would inspire an industry in which budgets ran wild because the rewards seemed limitless, in which summer action pictures dominated the industry and in which the hottest young directors wanted to make the Great American Blockbuster.^[1]