Penn 'Lay Dying' at Phoenix
The film will be shot in late spring in Oxford, Miss., where Faulkner was born 100 years ago. Penn, who helped put together a strong ensemble cast for "Hurlyburly" and also helped Terrence Malick enlist a star-studded cast that worked for low pay on "The Thin Red Line," expects to pull together a high- caliber group for "Dying."
The novel, the first adaptation of a Faulkner work since the 1969 Steve McQueen film "The Reivers," is one of the author's best-known works. A dark comedy, it details the struggle of a Southern family in the 1920s to honor the wishes of their late mother to be properly buried in her birthplace. They haul the mother's coffin in a mule-drawn wagon and are beset with such obstacles as flood and fire.
Kromolowski, best known for directing documentaries and short films, got the rights to the novel from Faulkner's daughter, Jill Faulkner-Summers. He and his wife wrote a script that not only got the estate's approval, but also hooked the producers.
"Faulkner was a screenwriter himself who adapted Hemingway's 'To Have and Have Not,' and Jerzy and Mary wrote a script that was true to the spirit of his novel," said Kirkwood, who's working with Medavoy for the first time since the UA hit "Rocky." Penn and Fitzgerald, who partner in the San Francisco-based production company Clyde Is Hungry Films, have a deal at Phoenix and brought the book to Medavoy, who agreed to finance it. Shooting will begin in the late spring.
"We have spoken to a lot of actors about it and everyone is extremely interested," Fitzgerald said. "We'll do a reading when Sean finishes 'Hurlyburly,' and know better about our cast shortly. It's a terribly funny script."
Said Medavoy: "It's a major literary work that I'd like to see go to the screen this year."
BECKER PULLS 'SOLO' DUTY: Veteran screenwriter Gary DeVore, who has been missing since last year and is feared dead, is living on through his work. DeVore's adaptation of the Jack Higgins novel "Solo" has landed Harold Becker, the "Sea of Love" director who's coming off the Imagine film "Mercury Rising," which stars Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. "Solo" is a cat-and-mouse chase between a CIA agent and a serial killer. The agent swears vengeance and conducts a personal manhunt of the killer after his daughter is murdered while the serial killer escapes a crime scene.
Becker will make the film his next directing assignment at Working Title. The film is a Ruddy/Morgan production that will be produced by Eric Fellner, with Al Ruddy, Andre Morgan and John Brown executive producing. They will begin casting the leads shortly.
RUSSELL MISSTEP: While Kurt Russell is known as an athletic actor who does a lot of his own stunts on the set, home is another matter. Russell broke his foot this week in a household accident Monday and has been gritting through the pain working on the Paul Anderson-directed Warner Bros. actioner "Soldier." The pic, which will be retitled, toplines Russell as a futuristic super-soldier pitted against a superior warrior (played by Jason Scott Lee). Russell's sporting a small cast, but hasn't missed a day of work.
Apparently, such macho activity has become a WB leading man tradition. Tommy Lee Jones didn't miss work even after he broke his ankle sliding into a base on the Ron Shelton-directed "Cobb." And when George Clooney suffered an ankle injury, he used crutches on "ER" and limped through part of "Batman & Robin."
DISHINGS: Former Cinergi production president Tova Laiter set up with MTV and Paramount the comedy "Varsity Blues," directed by Brian Robbins (Daily Variety, Jan. 27). She produces with Mike Tolins. ... The paucity of big-buck books so far has buyers salivating over "The Horse Whisperer" author Nicholas Evans's next novel. The rough draft of "Loupe," which refers to wolves, is in. Evans will make more revisions, and CAA's Bob Bookman should have it in buyers' hands the weekend of Feb. 20.
