After a couple of rocky years with pictures that underwhelmed, and some belt-tightening around the offices, The Weinstein Company are back. Sort of. At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the studio launched their Oscar hopeful “Lion” (our review) which received a blandly warm reception, but hardly an ecstatic one. Still, with Harvey Weinstein likely to spend the rest of the year pushing it hard, you can’t count it out of the awards season. And looking ahead to next year, he’s already eager to roll up his sleeves and take on a giant: Steven Spielberg.
In early 2017, Spielberg will begin production on “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara,” which has a script by Tony Kushner (“Lincoln,” “Munich“), will star Mark Rylance, and tell the 1858-set true story about a young Jewish boy who is taken from his home, raised Catholic, and becomes a priest. At one point, Spielberg and Weinstein were toying with collaborating on the movie, but the filmmaker went his own way, and now, the producer is hoping to see his own vision come to fruition.
To that end, Weinstein’s potential version of the story will have a script by Jeremy Brock (“The Last King Of Scotland“), with Baltasar Kormakur (“Everest,” “2 Guns“) directing, and Robert De Niro in the lead role. Weinstein also wants to get cameras rolling in 2017….but the director and actor are yet to sign on. And while both Spielberg and Weinstein will be telling the same basic story, their films will diverge on what years of the main character’s life will be covered.
These sort of head-to-head endeavors don’t always work out well, but it’ll be fun to watch, particularly with both movies looking to barrel toward the Oscars. Whose will be better? Which picture will audiences be more eager to see? These are questions that will be interesting to watch get answered.