After unwisely hooking up with George Lucas for 2008’s utterly pointless “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull” Steven Spielberg has been attached to a variety of interesting projects including his long gestating “Lincoln” biopic; a remake of “Old Boy” and “Chicago 7”, about the infamous trial that followed the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention and most recently, a government counter-agent project called, “Matt Helm.”
Well, those films will have to wait as Spielberg has decided to tackle a modern adaptation of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Harvey.” The story, about a mild-mannered man whose best friend happens to be a six-foot tale invisible rabbit, and how he changes the lives of those he encounters, was made popular by James Stewart’s iconic turn as Elwood P. Dowd in the 1950 film version directed by Henry Koster.
Spielberg’s version will be filmed off an adaptation by novelist Jonathan Tropper, who will be making his Hollywood debut with this film. There is no word yet on casting, but Spielberg’s go to guy Tom Hanks will undoubtedly be a leading candidate, no? No release dates have been set either, but 20th Century Fox (who own the rights to the play) and Dreamworks, who are co-producing the film, are probably aiming for a fall 2010 release date, with Oscars dancing in their heads. Pre-production will star immediately and shooting will being in January 2010 (“”The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,” is set for December 2011, so it seems like Spielberg can probably bang this out relatively while Peter Jackson works on the special effects).
The announcement of this project is a complete head scratching surprise, but we think it’s also a bit of a disappointment. “Harvey” is already a classic film that, despite its kind of corny premise, worked because of Stewart’s everyman charm.
UPDATE: a new DealMemo story says Tom Hanks and Will Smith are being eyed for the project and that Spielberg officially passed on “Matt Helm” last week, so we can probably scratch that off his to-do list. Also of note? Apparently Spielberg wasn’t even aware of the project until six days ago. He probably read the script and decided this would be a good bet for the Dreamworks/Disney partnership and the first film of their new collaboration.
At his worst, Spielberg is a mawkish sentimentalist and we worry what a “modern” take will entail. Will Harvey be made real with CGI? Will Daddy issues once again rear its head and we find out that Harvey is really the ghost of Dowd’s long dead father? We shudder to think what “Harvey” will feel like with John Williams soaring strings behind. Frankly, Chase’s and Koster’s version of “Harvey” is just fine, thank you very much, and a remake, even by someone as esteemed as Spielberg is unwarranted. We’d rather see him put his teeth into one of his passion projects rather than something that seems to have crossed his desk in the last week. Though, at least it’s not another Indiana Jones film. [THR]