If will he or won’t he is the question it appears we’re good to go. Perhaps he was playing coy, but last week Aussie director Baz Luhrmann (“Australia,” “Strictly Ballroom“) was telling anyone who asked that he may not direct the adaptation of F. Scott Fizgerald‘s “The Great Gatsby.” “I gotta make a decision in three days’ time, whether to do it or not,” Luhrmann told Vulture last Wednesday.
Well, it looks like he’s made his decision as Warner Bros. is moving full steam ahead to acquire rights to the drama that will likely star Leonard DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire (no deals are in place, but considering they’ve workshopped the picture with Luhrmann over the last few months, it’s a safe bet to assume they’ll all officially be onboard soon enough). WB hasn’t actually closed the deal either, but insiders say it will happen by Friday.
Co-written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce (“Romeo + Juliet,” “Moulin Rouge“), Deadline says talk of Luhrmann wavering on the film are “unfounded,” but dudes, those reports came from his own mouth.
“The Great Gatsby” has been made into a movie several times, most notably in 1974 by director Jack Clayton, based off a script by a young Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and Bruce Dern, but most critics agree, while interesting, it’s not much of a seminal effort. Interestingly enough, Maguire won’t be playing Tom Buchanan, the role that Dern inhabited in the aforementioned ’74 version. Instead he’ll be playing the narrator Nick Carraway who was played by Sam Waterston in that version. Dicaprio and Mulligan will play (naurally) Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, respectively.