I really don’t know how to comprehend the status of films nowadays as Variety has just announced Al Pacino will play the title role in King Lear for director Michael Radford. Sure, this may seem like just another casting announcement, but when you consider the fact this is the second film based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name to be announced in the past seven months you begin to wonder if all the ideas have dried up to the point that if you aren’t making a sequel you are rushing to get your other idea on film before someone else does.
Joe Carnahan recently dealt with the problem as both he and Antoine Fuqua were each getting ready to make a film adaptation of the life of Pablo Escobar. Carnahan appears to be moving on to the A-Team while Fuqua preps Escobar. Talk about a step down for Carnahan eh?
Gus Van Sant beat Bryan Singer to the punch with Milk as Singer took too long getting The Mayor of Castro Street into production.
Then there was Oliver Stone and Baz Luhrmann rushing their Alexander the Great films. Stone won out with his lackluster Colin Farrell starrer while Luhrmann’s adaptation of the Alexander story starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman never worked out.
And here we are again. From what I understood director Joshua Michael Stern was ready to bring King Lear to life with Anthony Hopkins in the title role with the likes of Keira Knightley, Gwyneth Paltrow and Naomi Watts co-starring. Is that still on? Who knows? Variety doesn’t mention the film in their announcement of the Pacino version so either they don’t know either or the press release they were given didn’t inspire additional research.
One thing I do know is this will be Pacino and Radford’s second go ’round with Shakespeare as the two teamed together for The Merchant of Venice in 2004, a film I actually enjoyed quite a bit on DVD, but it never caught on theatrically only making it into 107 theaters for a grand total of $3.7 million. Oh well, your loss if you didn’t see it.
I am interested in Radford’s picture, but the fact there appears to be dueling projects just makes it seem all the less interesting for some reason. Has the subject matter for films really dried up to the point we have to compete over them?
