An interesting late-day development in the middle of all the Sundance hub-bub going on today (it’s day 1 of the festival).
Variety is reporting that Sean Penn and Robert Pattison are eyeing roles in a project called, “Water For Elephants” that already has Reese Witherspoon and director Francis Lawrence attached (“I Am Legend,” “Constantine,” and several well-known music videos before that).
The film is based on the best-selling novel by Sara Gruen and its being adapted to the screen by Richard LaGravenese (“The Ref,” “The Fisher King,” “Living Out Loud”). The book has been out for years so obviously it’s basically about a traveling circus during the depression era (which is pretty odd when you think about this cast). The Amazon description reads thusly:
With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen’s romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers’ Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[…] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show’s star performers — a romance complicated by Marlena’s husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story’s ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.
Weird. So essentially this is a romantic vehicle for Pattison (Jankowski) and Witherspoon (Marlena) and Penn would play the “sadistic circus boss”? Seems pretty fitting as there are only really three main figures in that synopsis. Apparently the book was optioned in 2007. Would this not be a really weird picture to see? Especially from the guy who directed, “I Am Legend” with Will Smith. Hollywood what will you think of next!
Small update: DHD says Witherspoon is also circling a romantic comedy project with Bradley Cooper called, “This Means War.” We like the two of them lots, but both of them seem to fail miserably anytime they’re in a straight-up rom com.