Yup, it's one of those stories that usually breaks on April 1st by those ever so clever bloggers looking to 'fool' people but wait, it's January 21st and it's actually... TRUE!
Deadline have broken the news that Hollywood veteran
Clint Eastwood has just struck a deal with Warner Bros to direct & produce singer/sometimes actress
Beyonce Knowles in a remake of the hit musical
A Star is Born that shoots in the fall, once
J. Edgar is out of the way. Come again? I read the story three times word for word before it sunk in. STUNNED. A Star is Born is the familiar tale of a wide-eyed, ambitious beauty who dreams of fame and stardom and who finds herself a mentor - an aging leading actor - washed out and addicted to the bottle. There's been a fair few versions of the tale but the 1954 drama with Judy Garland and James Mason, as directed by George Cukor, is a genuine cinematic classic.
Worryingly updated by Will Fetters, screenwriter of that dreadfully manipulative Robert Pattinson vehicle Remember Me and maybe more troublesomely, with two of the producers responsible for the disastrous 1976 Streisand/Kristofferson version getting a second role of the dice here, this new musical contemporazies the story and transforms it into a young singer falling for an older rock star. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN. Beyonce has been attached to the project for the past year with the likes of Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr and Jon Hamm all linked for the male lead, for what the studio believes could be a grand audience pleaser. But all of those actors saw what a huge vanity project this would be for Beyonce and wouldn't commit - so colour us shocked that Eastwood has taken the bait! However, maybe we have forgotten that Clint is a big music fan. He does handle all the scores for his films himself and he also directed the jazz movie Bird and famously played a jazz DJ in Play Misty For Me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNL30u1jbDM No word yet then on who the male lead will be but Eastwood's last few movies have seen Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie star, all A-listers, so that's the caliber that a legend like he can always attract for his films. This could now be one of the most sought-after male roles in Hollywood. I have to ask though... Just what is going on with Eastwood lately? Did he take the negative reaction to Invictus to heart or what? First there was that completely left field spiritualist drama Hereafter, which I wouldn't have suggested was an Eastwood picture in a million years if I hadn't known he made it, then a movie about a cross-dressing former FBI chief in J Edgar that's forthcoming and now a REMAKE of a genuine Musical classic and with Beyonce to lead? What? When did Eastwood become this unpredictable and varied? For twenty years, from the mid 80's to Million Dollar Baby - Eastwood rarely left his comfort zone of Westerns, Crime Thrillers and modest character drama's, his career was as predictable (it would either be a great genre piece, or just a decent one) as they come but for the past few years, he's become the genre-hopper. Fascinating.