Will Smith Joins Russell Crowe in Winter's Tale

Vulture reports that Will Smith will team for the first time with fellow A-list actor Russell Crowe in Winter's Tale, the fantasy, time-bending Warner Bros drama that marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. Crowe was cast back in November to play the villain. The film is an adaptation of Mark Helprin's 1983 best-selling novel that flips back and forth between two different time periods in Manhattan, one in the early 19th century and one later that century. It centers on the love between an Irish burglar and a dying young woman, though Crowe & Smith have neither parts, instead taking supporting turns as a judge (Smith) and as gangster Pearly Soames (Crowe). I've never read the much loved novel but it has such a complex plot that there isn't really anyway to condense it into a few sentences, so here's how the book is officially described;

Set in New York at the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, "Winter´s Tale" unfolds with such great narrative force and beauty that a reader can feel that its world is more real than his own. Standing alone on the page before the book begins are the words, I have been to another world, and come back. Listen to me. In that world, both winter and the city of New York (old and new) have the strength and character of protagonists, and the protagonists themselves move as if in a vivid dream. Though immensely complicated, the story is centered upon Peter Lake, a turn-of-the-century Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young heiress whom he encounters in robbing her house, and who eventually will die young and in his arms. His love for her, and a gift of grace, will allow him after the most extraordinary and painful explorations and discoveries to stop time and bring back the dead. To follow him, his predecessors, his inheritors, and his companions is to experience one of the great stories of American literature.

Both Crowe & Smith sound like they have signed up for the film to help out a friend after Goldsman called in as many favours as he could to keep his movie alive after Warner Bros got nervous over the $75 million budget and it looked like the adaptation could be next on the same chopping block that saw Akira, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and other high profile projects be cancelled at the studio. But with $20 million trimmed from the budget and with Smith & Crowe on board (both presumably with much lower than usual deals), the film is well and truly moving forward with filming planned for around September & October. Goldsman is one of the highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood and wrote both A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man for Ron Howard & Russell Crowe. He also wrote Batman & Robin too, but he likes to keep quiet about that. The connection with Will Smith comes from producing I, Robot, I Am Legend and Hancock. No word on who will nab the lead roles but with Crowe & Smith on board it shouldn't be too hard to find interest.