It just doesn’t seem to be going right for Jonathan Demme recently. He had been working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s “11/22/63” alongside the author, but that fell apart last December with King and Demme unable to agree on the correct direction for the film to take (it’s now being developed for TV). Now another one of Demme’s projects seems to have fallen by the wayside, and that’s the Heather McGowan (“Tadpole”) scripted “Old Fires.”
When we caught up with Demme last December he was talking very passionately about the project and was hoping to get it in front of cameras at some point this year. Thanks to Jennifer Ehle we now know that’s not happening, with the actress sending out the following tweet last week:
“So Old Fires’s definitely postponed. If Demme can’t get $ for truly great script w/Brian Cranston & Jason Segal… #dramaisadirtyword”
Now it might not be the most be the most erudite tweet from Ehle (and she may have spelled the names of both of her co-stars incorrectly) but it certainly gets the point across. Sounds like Demme had a really interesting cast on board for the project and it sounded like he’d have had Cranston front and centre in a very interesting role. Demme told us how the project was “a family drama that centers around a middle-aged guy who emerges from a coma that he’s been in for many months and discovers that his family have kind of moved on from him, and he wants them back.” Yeah, we’re not surprised Ehle’s disappointed, we are too.
Bear in mind that it’s on hold, and therefore not necessarily dead and buried, but you can’t expect a cast that hot to stick around for very long. Has anyone told Demme about Kickstarter?