Princess Diana’s brother is looking to break into the movie business.
Charles Spencer has been doing the rounds of Hollywood studios, shopping a script based on his new book about one of his ancestors, execution victim King Charles I.
“It’s like ‘Game of Thrones’ on acid,” said the English aristocrat, already sounding like a Hollywood player now that he lives in Pacific Palisades.
But all the violence and beheadings in “Killers of the King” are proving too much for some, revealed Earl Spencer, as he is formally titled.
“As I started to tell her the gruesome story, one studio executive started turning green and wrapping a pashmina over her head,” he said. “I don’t think that went well. Another told me, ‘We only make movies for teenage boys’ and yet another said, ‘Can we have a happier ending than the king being killed?’”
But even if he doesn’t get to turn his book into a film, Spencer can console himself with the profits from Spencer Heritage, a business that makes and markets replicas of the elegant furniture and accessories found at Althorp, his ancestral home.
“It’s been a huge success and provided enough money to get the leaky roof at Althorp fixed for the first time since 1780,” the earl said after giving a talk in Santa Monica to the British American Business Council, where his tales of British historical trivia captivated a packed crowd.
Anyone who remembers his compelling eulogy at Diana’s funeral knows his ability to hold an audience spellbound, and so it proved as he related stories about everything from Humpty Dumpty’s true role as a canon in the English Civil War to the fact that Mary Queen of Scots took a long time to die as rusty, blunted equipment was used to chop off her head.
It’s Alive
Independent movie producer Francis O’Toole bought a run-down Malibu mansion and transformed it into a gothic house of horrors just so he could achieve his longtime dream of shooting a Frankenstein movie in his own home.
Three years and $500,000 in financing later, the dream has come true. O’Toole, owner of Phantom Studios and a cousin of the late Peter O’Toole, will start shooting his updated version of Mary Shelley’s horror classic, setting it in 1930s Hollywood with Dr. Frankenstein as a plastic surgeon.
His Malibu neighbors, Charlie Sheen and Jeff Bridges, are not attached to the project but would surely love the weirdness within “Castle Frankenstein,” which is full of operating tables and torture chambers that O’Toole made himself.
The only problem the producer has been having is finding someone to work in the horror house as his personal assistant.
“When I greeted one applicant at the door, she saw all the weirdness over my shoulder and ran off never to be seen again,” he said.
The Business
Paris Hilton’s younger brother Conrad Hilton has reached a plea deal with prosecutors that will see him avoid jail time over his profanity filled rant on a London-to-L.A. flight during which he allegedly called the other passengers “peasants.” But one of those passengers is imposing her own penalty. L.A. life coach Patricia Mitchell, who gave evidence to the FBI after witnessing the 21 year old’s antics, is vowing never again to stay in a Hilton hotel as a result of the trauma. … After news that NBC is developing a miniseries called “Freedom Run” executive produced by Stevie Wonder about a mass escape by a group of slaves who were helped to flee Georgia by abolitionists, cable channel WGN America is in talks with Kanye West about getting involved with their competing project, titled “Underground,” on the same topic. … Universal Music Chief Executive Lucian Grainge, who has helped build the careers of artists including Sam Smith, Katy Perry, Andrea Bocelli and the late Amy Winehouse, is to get a special honor celebrating his 30 years in the business. The British executive, who runs the music empire from Santa Monica, will be presented with the Creative Fusion Award at the BritWeek UK Trade and Investment Business Innovation Awards dinner in Beverly Hills on April 23. … Voltage Pictures, the film company behind Academy Awards winners “The Hurt Locker” and “Dallas Buyers Club,” has appointed Jonathan Deckter president. Nicolas Chartier remains chief executive of the firm.
Staff reporter Sandro Monetti can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 226.
