Shock Horror: Sandals Back in Fashion

I don’t like to brag (well, I do: it’s just always better to pretend you don’t), but I did a little spot on BBC radio at the start of last year trying to predict what the trends for 1999 might be. “Ghosts and things that go bump in the night,” I said - not bad for a year which saw The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense and The Haunting.
Now, in earlyish 2000, might it be time to say that the sword-and-sandal movie is due to make a comeback? Hard to believe that the like of Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire will ever be repeated. But two major directors are currently working on movies set in ancient Rome, with one already in the can and the other on a fast track. Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is due to open in the US in the first week in May (and must, therefore, be a strong contender for a Cannes screening). And Michael Mann (no relation, as far as I know, to sword-and-sandal king Anthony) is planning an as-yet untitled movie about the battle for power between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great in the first century BC.
Mann, who is riding high on the critical and box-office success of The Insider, has reportedly got Tom Hanks interested in playing Caesar, in a story about how the latter’s military triumphs aroused jealousy in the Eternal City, and eventually brought him into conflict with his mentor, Pompey.
Mann, incidentally, is also attached to the DreamWorks Howard Hughes biopic, which Leonardo Di Caprio mentioned in Berlin as being “the only one I can think of right now” when asked what future projects he was considering after The Beach.

Jude’s Law

H e attracted the most attention, got the best reviews and picked up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for The Talented Mr Ripley. He crops up on page 40 of this issue in Love, Honour & Obey. And now British actor Jude Law is set for his first starring role in a major Hollywood movie.
He will play the lead in Shekhar Kapur’s first film since the hugely successful Elizabeth: a remake of Zoltan Korda’s 1939 action epic The Four Feathers, based on the AEW Masters Boy’s Own-style story about a young soldier who must prove himself in battle during an uprising in the Sudan if he is to escape the stigma of the title: that he is a coward.
Korda’s film - of which Graham Greene said “even the richest ham goes smoothly down, savoured with humour and satire” - was neither the first nor the most recent version of the tale. There were silent versions in 1921 and 1929, plus a 1956 version called Storm Over the Nile (produced by Korda and directed by Terence Young) and a TV movie in 1977.
Law will be following in the footsteps of Richard Arlen (1929), John Clements (1939), Anthony Steel (1956) and Beau Bridges (1977). The screenplay is by Hossein Amini, who scripted Wings of the Dove and Jude, and the film is due to go in front of the cameras in July.

All Shook Up...

K evin Costner and Chuck Russell could do their first co-starring stint in the heist thriller 3,000 Miles to Graceland, which is about a couple of ex-cons who rob a casino. The only connection with The King, though, is that they do the deed during an Elvis Convention week. Director is Demian Lichtenstein, who cut his creative teeth on music videos.

Rolling...

T he very end of any year and the very beginning of the next is never a busy time for production starts but, what with the millennium, the changeover from 1999 to 2000 was particularly slow.
Things picked up considerably in February (see our regular ‘Production Calendar’ starting on page 51), however, and Valentine’s Day - February 14 - saw the start of filming on at least five interesting projects. There was Antitrust, the first movie since Sliding Doors from director Peter Howitt, starring Ryan Philippe and Tim Robbins, which is filming in Vancouver. And there was an even longer-delayed follow-up - The Caveman’s Valentine, from Eve’s Bayou director Kasi Lemmons, which is jointly produced by Jersey Shore and Franchise Pictures, and has Samuel L Jackson once again in the lead.
Following much harder on the heels of their last film, meanwhile, American Pie directors Chris and Paul Weitz called “Action!” on I Was Made to Love Her, featuring Chris Rock, Regina King, Chazz Palminteri and Mark Addy. The promising above-the-line pairing of Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie also started work on Dancing in the Dark down Mexico way for Alphaville Productions and Paramount. And last but not least, Chris Penn got down to directing his third film, The Pledge, which is also his second movie with Jack Nicholson.
On the potential blockbuster circuit, Arnold Schwarzenegger showed age and a major operation are no barrier to sci-fi action movies by starting work on December 6 on a movie called On The Sixth Day, in which he plays a chopper pilot who crashes in the desert some time in the future, is presumed dead but finally returns home only to find he has been cloned.