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| AFTER MATH
FATHER & DAUGHTERGwyneth Paltrow as Catherine and Anthony Hopkins as Robert. proof
The process began when New York producer John Hart went to see David Auburn’s play, Proof, at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway almost five years ago. Jeff Sharp, his partner in Hart Sharp Entertainment, had already read the play before its off-Broadway premiere in the spring of 2000 and had been greatly impressed. But he hadn’t envisaged it as a film. Hart disagreed. “I went to a matinee and immediately fell in love with the play,” he says. “I thought there was an elegance to it and that we should do everything we could to shepherd the play into a film. Many people will option works and then not necessarily make them; we don’t option that much and what we do option, we make.” The partners’ enthusiasm for the project was shared by Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax who became executive producers and who felt that the perfect choice as director would be John Madden. Not only had Madden scored a major hit (and a string of Oscars) for Miramax Films with Shakespeare in Love: he had just directed the West End premiere of Proof. Strangely enough Madden, whose production opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London in April 2002, hadn’t really felt Proof was a screen project either - until, that is, he had spent some time working on it in the theatre. |
