Long before the
Coen Brothers thought of remaking the Western classic
True Grit, those devilish and unpredictable auteurs had put their blood, sweat and tears into a new take on the 1966 caper comedy
Gambit, a long forgotten gem of British cinema that 44 years ago had originally starred
Michael Caine and
Shirley MacLaine. The wonderfully entertaining movie was only put on DVD here in the U.K. recently and I highly recommend it if you can track it down. Finding the tone and the elaborate plot difficult to crack (the original film was told backwards long before
Memento!), the Coens finally completed their long-gestated screenplay for a redo a little while back but were so exhausted by the whole thing, they had no energy to film it themselves so they hired somebody else to direct. That man was
Michael Hoffman (The Last Station), a talented filmmaker who now has a leading man in sight with
Colin Firth, who has been heavily linked with the project for two years,
now officially in talks to lead. Firth would play the cat burglar who attempts to steal a priceless statute from a billionaire with the help of a sultry waitress who is a spitting image of the target's deceased wife. Watch the trailer for the original
HERE - it's everything I had hoped
The Brothers Bloom would be but wasn't.
Once upon a time
Sandra Bullock and then sometime later
Jennifer Aniston were being courted to play the MacLaine role. I don't know about you folks but a wink-wink, lighthearted caper comedy from the duo of Firth/Bullock, reading the Coen Brothers words, with direction from a great dramatist and of course the foundations of a wonderful but so criminally under-seen story as a guide... well, that's something to get excited over. Filming begins in London next May from newcomers Crime Scene Pictures!