Studios have a project before them this week that, like best picture Oscar-winner "The English Patient," comes armed with critical potential that outweighs its commercial prospects. Ridley Scott's poised to direct "RKO 281," a John Logan-scripted film inspired by the Oscar-nominated docu "The Battle Over Citizen Kane."
The script circulated to talent, and before you could say "Rosebud was his sled," a swarm of Oscar-caliber actors has lined up to take part --- if a studio will foot a budget that could exceed $40 million. Possible cast members who've already expressed an interest in the project: Edward Norton as young Orson Welles; Marlon Brando as newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst; Madonna as Hearst mistress Marion Davies; Dustin Hoffman as "Kane" co-scripter Herman J. Mankiewicz; and Meryl Streep as Hedda Hopper, the pitbull gossip Hearst employed to raze "Kane."
Disney had first look and passed. Sources say that for its budget, the pic didn't fit its event-fare program. After all, Disney bought Miramax to win it Oscars.
Other studio execs are now reading it. The rumored top hope is Sony's John Calley, who's renowned for taste but has been slow to greenlight new product to put TriStar and Columbia on new courses. Another tastemeister, Fox 2000's Laura Ziskin, might be a natural, but she just cast her Oscar lot on the $45 million Terrence Malick adaptation of "The Thin Red Line." That Phoenix pic has a potential cast including John Travolta, Sean Penn, Norton, George Clooney, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte and Viggo Mortensen. No comment from the Scott camp.
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