Spielberg's LINCOLN this Christmas?
Last month we heard from star Liam Neeson that he hadn't even seen a completed screenplay for the proposed Steven Spielberg directed biopic of Abraham Lincoln and that it was unlikely to film this year. However as you know, unlikely doesn't neccessarily mean it won't happen. MUICH screenwriter Tony Kushner has told grad students at a Harvard University Institute of Politics forum that the decision will be made on Lincoln next week and if it gets the greenlight it will be out by Christmas, so it can still be released in the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Kushner said the film...
only covers two months of his life, and that the first draft covered four months and 500 pages, and the 13th amendment the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude is a big thing in the movie.Which means 55 year old Neeson, the same age as Lincoln when he was assassinated, is able to play the part all by himself. No younger actor will be needed. We shouldn't be all that surprised by the ambitious quick turn around for Spielberg. Recently he has become apt to shooting things quickly, the insane work ethic he showed on both MUNICH and WAR OF THE WORLDS was quite unlike anything I've ever seen. MUNICH began photography in July 2005 and I saw it in the cinema in January 2006. WAR OF THE WORLDS had a similar quick shoot. Spielberg is currently working on TINTIN but will probably be free all Summer to shoot this movie which presumably won't have the big scale epic Civil War sequences we might have expected from this movie. Jeffrey Wells, the source for this info points out...
If any attention is to be paid to the Civil War during the last 60 days of Lincoln's term, possible inclusions would be (a) the Union victory at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1st, which forced Gen. Robert E. Lee to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond, the Confederate capital, (b) a subsequent rebel loss at Sayler's Creek, and (c) Lee's surrender on April 9, 1865, in the village of Appomattox Court House.He goes on to say that when he spoke to Neeson personally about this project way back in the Summer of 2005, it was being made with the intention of spanning the whole of LINCOLN'S life. Which no longer is the case.