In our interview with Lords of Dogtown helmer Catherine Hardwicke posted just last night [read here] she told us she was the following:
I’m working on a cult classic, a book called “The Monkey Wrench Gang”. This is a book written by Edward Abbey, he was a crazy funny eccentric man that lived in the American southwest around Moab, Utah and then he felt developers and industry encroaching on it so he formed this band of pranksters to try and draw attention to the environment. This book is really funny. Pearl Jam’s pirate radio station was named “Monkey Wrench”, there’s this huge fan club all over the world.
Guys like Robert Redford, Sean Penn, Dennis Hopper, all these guys have been very interested in trying to get this movie made now we hope we’re going to actually do it here at Sony. It’s a comedy, a crazy action. We are getting a draft from William Goldman (Princess Bride, All the President’s Men, Misery, Maverick), that came in from New York today. Then we’ll make the formal offers. We have a lot of cool people really excited about it.
Well it seems Ms. Hardwicke was holding out on us as official word came down through Variety today that she will indeed direct The Monkey Wrench Gang for Columbia Pictures.
The story concerns a motley group of environmental warriors who wage mayhem against road builders and other developers in southern Utah. Publication of Abbey’s novel in 1975 gave rise to a new generation of environmentalists who practiced “monkey-wrenching” — sabotage for the sake of saving the Earth.
