Aronofsky
Jackman
Two years after it supposedly ran dry, Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" is bubbling back to life, but with a decidedly leaner budget. This time, the pic will likely star Hugh Jackman instead of Brad Pitt.
Slated to go before cameras in fall 2002, pic was set to be a $75 million co-production between Warner Bros. Pictures and New Regency.
Originally, a bushy-bearded Pitt was to have had the lead role, but he stepped off the project in August 2002, displeased by a late-in-the-game rewrite of the script, co-written by Aronofsky and Ari Handel.
Now, the studio is courting the Aussie star for the role Pitt vacated.
Project would now be budgeted between $35 million and $40 million.
Pitt's untimely exit was only the latest problem to bedevil "Fountain" at the time; it had already been unplugged once before, delayed for a year over co-star Cate Blanchett's pregnancy as well as plagued by repeated budget battles at the studio and a change in co-financier, from Village Roadshow to New Regency.
Jackman comes off a stint playing Aussie crooner Peter Allen on Broadway last fall in "The Boy From Oz" and, most recently, toplining U's Stephen Sommers actioner "Van Helsing," due out in May.
Aronofsky has been working diligently to shave costly set pieces from his script, which spanned 500 years at one point.
Little is known about the story. Originally it followed its main character on a psychological journey set in the present, but with a plotline reaching centuries into both the past and the future. Among the themes explored are love, death and immortality.
Costs already incurred
Still at issue is roughly $18 million in pre-production costs incurred in prepping the first time around. Some of that coin went toward sets built in Australia -- in some cases, for scenes not even in the latest script. A seven-figure sum was also owed to Blanchett, who had made a pay-or-play deal on the pic.
iscussions hinge on finding a way for the two financial partners to absorb those costs equitably. Some, though hardly all, of the project's original pre-production expenses are thought to have been mitigated by Pitt's negotiating a less-than-usual fee for his role in Warner's Homeric epic "Troy."
Aronofsky inked a first-look deal with Regency via his Protozoa Pictures in January 2003 after the first "Fountain" went dry. There, separately, he is producing a pic based on the Dan Simmons novel "Song of Kali," with scribe Lucas Sussman adapting the tome.
Elsewhere, Aronofsky is developing a live-action version of "Lone Wolf and Cub," based on the Kazuo Koike-created samurai graphic novel collection; it is set up with Mutual Film at Paramount.
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