EH BIEN, BABY!
It may just be a by-product of Hollywood’s rash of panic booking in the run-up to next summer’s anticipated writers’ and actors’ strikes, but it’s kind of interesting all the same. Along with the flood of rumours about who had been signed up to do what that brought 2000 to a close came one that Mike Myers was being courted to take up the challenge of Clouzeau.
Peter Sellers first created the bumbling French detective in Blake Edwards’ 1964 movie, The Pink Panther, and played it in four sequels before his death in 1977 (not to mention one subsequent posthumous movie, The Trail of the Pink Panther, which was patched together from out-takes in 1982). Then Roberto Benigni took up the mantle in Son of the Pink Panther in 1993 - a film which was such an unmitigated disaster that we all assumed the franchise was dead and buried.
But MGM/UA, which continues to coin money with a franchise that is even longer in the tooth (the Bond movies: they started in 1972), is reported to be thinking of reviving Clouzeau for the new millennium. Which is where Myers comes in - or not, as the case may be. No contracts have apparently been signed yet, and other names are being bandied about, the most intriguing among them being Kevin Spacey. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that Ivan Reitman is lined up to produce the film, and possibly to direct it as well.
Myers, however, has finally passed on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the Warners comedy based on Chuck Barris’ experiences as host of US TV’s The Gong Show. Ben Stiller - currently riding even higher than usual as a result of Meet the Parents - was at one stage due to take over, if he could find the time: he is directing and starring in Zoolander; will star in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums; and is considering a sequel to Parents. But he couldn’t, so Johnny Depp and Golden Globe-winner George Clooney have taken over. Bryan Singer directs and production begins in March.
AYE, AYE, CAP'N
Meanwhile, if Tony Scott is no longer involved with the Ali film, brother Ridley is splicing the mainbrace in preparation for a pirate pic. Having put his career very much back in the fast track with last summer’s Gladiator (and unlikely to pass unnoticed with this issue’s cover movie, Hannibal), Scott seems to have developed a predilection for reviving so-called dead genres. First there was the sword-and-sandal epic with Gladiator; now comes the pirate movie with Captain Kidd.
The latter film, which will be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for the Scott brothers’ own outfit, Scott Free, at Disney, will be based on the real-life exploits of the 17th-century brigand who, in the best tradition of noble outlaws, robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Recent pirate epics - notably Roman Polanski’s ill-fated Pirates and the scarcely less troubled Renny Harlin pic, Cutthroat Island - haven’t given anything much to the poor or anyone else.
But Scott - working from a screenplay by Doug Cook and David Weisberg, whose credits include The Rock and Double Jeopardy - ought to be able to re-set the genre’s sails. No casting yet, and no clear start date. But it’s unlikely to happen in 2001: Scott will go more or less straight from Hannibal to Black Hawk Down, a contemporary war movie about the 1993 American campaign to, er, make Mogadishu a safer place. That pic will star Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore and Aussie comedian Eric Bana, who made his stunning movie-acting debut last year in the title role of Andrew Dominik’s Chopper.
