Fast Carrier targets pair of WW II pix

Rubin gears up for 'Cut Off' and 'Silent Night'

By DAVE MCNARY

Producer Steven Jay Rubin has obtained rights to a pair of WWII projects, "Cut Off" and "The Silent Night," for his Fast Carrier Pictures.

Rubin plans to produce "Cut Off," based on war correspondent Bill Davidson's autobiographical book of the same name, with Rory Aylward.

During the Battle of the Bulge, Davidson spent seven days in the Ardennes with two Jewish children trying to reach an American refugee center with the odyssey including encounters with the Belgian underground, black marketers, American intelligence officers, German POWs and author Ernest Hemingway.

Roger Aylward and Eliza Sweet have been tapped to write the "Cut Off" script.

Rubin also plans to team with Rory Aylward to produce "The Silent Night," the true story of 12-year-old German Fritz Vincken and his mother, who invited American and German combat soldiers to share Christmas Eve in their mountain cabin in 1944. Rubin, who is writing the script with Edward Will, optioned the material from Vincken, a retired baker and naturalized American citizen living in Hawaii.

Rubin is aiming to position Fast Carrier, which has a first-look deal with Showtime Networks, as a developer of reasonably priced WWII dramas in the wake of the success of Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan."

"There's an opportunity for smaller films that could not have been made 10 years ago, especially intimate dramas that have as much force as epics," he said.

Other Fast Carrier projects in development:

• A "harder-edged" remake of "A Walk in the Sun" with Rubin, Dana Walker and Steve Mitchell as producers and Mitchell scripting. The project is out to directors. Rights were acquired from Parasol Media.

• "The Hooligans," based on the book by Tom Townsend about a group of American orphans who pilot a yacht into the North Atlantic in 1942 and help sink a German U-boat. Rubin and Rory Aylward are producing the project, based on a script by Townsend.

• An update of Sam Fuller's Korean War drama "The Steel Helmet," set in present-day West Africa. Rubin and Becky Arntzen are producing, and Rubin is writing the script.

Rubin also owns the rights to "Combat!," the ABC series which ran from 1962 to 1967 and starred Vic Morrow. That project is currently in limbo.