You know that good-hearted guy who really wants to get with a hot girl he loves and whilst she will humour him from time to time,
she won't put out - but he loves her so much that all his natural instincts are thrown out of the window and he doesn't realise he is actually just being strung along the whole time? That's
Liam Neeson's relationship with
Steven Spielberg for the past five years over the director's long-gestated
Lincoln biopic, a movie which I doubt one person on the planet believes is ever going to be made at this point. Originally set to film in 2005 after
War of the Worlds, Spielberg has dilly-dallied, played with Indiana Jones,
flirted with invisible rabbits,
court drama's and Tintin - all the while Neeson was constantly assured he would be shooting the movie soon. Neeson put his career on hold for three years to make this movie but Spielberg simply led him on. By 2008 (the year when he turned 56, the same age as Lincoln when he died), we think he's known that's he done waiting around for Spielberg but he made it public this week, telling
GMTV;
Im not actually playing Lincoln now... I was attached to it for a while, but its now Im past my sell-by date.
Will Spielberg ever make his Lincoln biopic? It seems unlikely. I wrote last August that Spielberg goes to bed every night frightened by the daunting task of filming a movie as important as Lincoln and his decision to make The War Horse, a quintessential Spielberg picture, as his next live-action movie is indicative of this.
Later this year, Robert Redford releases The Conspirator - the movie about the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination and gearing up for a start date is Timbur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, where Honest Abe is re-imagined as "an ax-throwing, highly trained vampire assassin," All the while Spielberg sweats at night, scared of climbing his Mount Everest. Sure, he could cast Daniel Day-Lewis now that Neeson's gone, or he could probably still convince Neeson to do it if he actually commits to a firm start date - but Spielberg doesn't actually want to make this movie. We all know it.