As we’ve seen time after time, you can never fully guarantee a film will be released until you step into a theater and pay for a ticket yourself. Whether something happens during the development, during the production, or even during editing and post, a film is never truly a done deal until it is, in fact, done. And that can’t be illustrated better than the recent news that Netflix halted production on Alexander Payne’s newest film just days before filming was to commence.
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According to Deadline, an unexpected rights issue has led to a brick wall in the development of a film that was to be directed by Payne and starring Mads Mikkelsen. Announced just a month ago, the untitled film was said to be based on the life of journalist Karl Ove Knausgarb, a Danish man who brings his teenage daughter on a road trip across America for a story. But you see, Knausgarb apparently had an “out” in his contract that allowed him to pull the plug whenever he saw fit. And that means, even with just days to go before production begun, the journalist decided that he wasn’t ready for a film version of his life.
As mentioned, the film was set to star Mads Mikkelsen as the journalist at the center of the story. The untitled project, written by Erlend Loe, was set to be Payne’s first film since the 2017 disappointment, “Downsizing.”
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However, with this film officially dead (and the report says that there have been many attempts to get the film back on track, but it doesn’t appear likely to happen), maybe this frees up Payne to work on the long-in-development film “The Menu,” which was supposed to star Emma Stone? Obviously, this is still a new situation, so any decisions about what’s next are likely still a ways off.
The now-defunct Netflix film was announced to have a fall 2020 release date and be one of the streaming service’s awards hopefuls next year. Now, the streamer is going to have to keep shopping for something else to take its place.