Directors Steven Spielberg and Robert Redford are both lining up to put legendary former US President Abraham Lincoln on the big screen – in completely different projects.
Spielberg has been working on his project for some time, but has had to postpone due to budget and location issues, and now Robert Redford looks like getting there first, with his new movie “The Conspirator”.
“The Conspirator”, which starts shooting next month, stars James McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn in a film about a woman who is arrested on a charge of being part of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. It is Redford’s first picture since 2007’s “Lions For Lambs”, a commercial disaster for United Artists.
Spielberg, who is working on a remake of the James Stewart film “Harvey”, about a man whose best friend is a giant rabbit who only he can see, does not seem too concerned by the competition, however. “We are happy that Robert Redford will be doing this Lincoln movie,” Spielberg told Peter Bart of Variety. “It is completely different from what our DreamWorks movie will be and we believe it will add to the commercial potential of our film. Lincoln as a subject is inexhaustible.”
Indeed, the Spielberg treatment is reputedly concerned with Lincoln’s anguish over the length and cost of the American Civil War, in a script currently being rewritten by Tony Kushner, which does sound very unlike the Redford picture. “The Conspirator” is being financed independently, from outside the Hollywood studio system.
