Fifteen years after winning the best picture Oscar for “Platoon,” Oliver Stone is heading back to Vietnam.
The writer-director has come aboard to develop Columbia Pictures’ “Spite House,” based on a true story by Monika Jensen-Stevenson.
“Spite” tells the tale of Bobby Garwood, a young marine who in 1965 was sent to pick up an officer while on tour in Vietnam and then failed to return. Captured by the Viet Cong, he was imprisoned and tortured, while labeled a deserter by the U.S. military. After he escaped and found his way back home in 1979, he was court-martialed for treason.
—
Stone isn’t the only major filmmaker who’s planning a new film. Terrence Malick, who came to fame with the Richard Gere starrer “Days of Heaven” and recently returned behind the cameras for “The Thin Red Line,” will produce (but not direct) Intermedia’s “Brighton Rock.”
Based on British novelist Graham Greene’s book, “Rock” was famously filmed more than 50 years ago, with then-youngster Richard Attenborough taking the lead role of a petty thug in a British seaside community who turns to murder. No cast is yet in place, and Malick has yet to name a director for the film.
That classic 1960s’ sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” may be the next TV staple to come to the big screen.
Revolution Studios, the deep-pocketed new production company created by former Walt Disney Studios chief Joe Roth with some $3 billion of financing, has bought the rights from recently shuttered Destination Films, with Revolution partner Tom Sherak shepherding the project.
—
Stephen King is coming back to the movies.
The thriller-chiller novelist’s “Dreamcatcher” is being developed as a film by his longtime movie partners Castle Rock Entertainment, the company behind “Stand By Me,” “Dolores Claiborne,” “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile.”
William Goldman (“Marathon Man”) will adapt the project, which will be directed by veteran Lawrence Kasdan (“The Big Chill”).
Sources said King will get at least $1 million up front for rights to the tale, about four childhood friends who come together years later in a heroic action.
Just as DreamWorks SKG and Warner Bros. are getting underway with post-production on “The Time Machine,” directed by H.G. Wells’ great-grandson Simon Wells, Robert Redford is doggedly pursuing his own time-travel tale. He has hired Oscar nominee Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count On Me”) to script “Time and Again.”
For the past seven years, Redford has been actively developing the Universal project about a man who is sent time-traveling back to the late 19th century as part of a government experiment, only to fall in love with a woman he meets during his adventures.
Contributing columnist Stephen Galloway can be reached at [email protected].
