DE PALMA HAD WALKED AWAY FROM PROJECT AFTER TOO MANY SCRIPT MEETINGS WITH HBO
"I find that television executives are very intrusive," Brian De Palma told Variety's Nick Vivarelli at the Venice Film Festival in September, 2015. "I’ve never had so many meetings with so many notes about a script than the one I developed for Al Pacino [about the fall of Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno] that HBO wanted to influence in a way that made it unworkable. I got to a point where I said: ‘guys, I’m done.'"One year earlier, in September of 2014, HBO suspended pre-production on Happy Valley "for a moment to deal with budget issues," the network said at the time in a statement to Deadline, adding, "but the project is still intact at HBO with the entire creative team as before." Deadline then cited other unnamed sources to say that "the suspension would also be used for additional script work." Sounds like all that script work irked De Palma the wrong way, and he eventually walked away.
This morning, Showbiz 411's Roger Friedman reported that Barry Levinson will now direct Pacino in an untitled movie "about Joe Paterno and the Sandusky scandals at Penn State." Levinson and Pacino had previously collaborated on HBO's Jack Kervorkian biopic You Don't Know Jack in 2010. Levinson has a current vibe with HBO-- his Bernie Madoff biopic, The Wizard Of Lies, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, premieres on the network this weekend. In 2013, Pacino made another biopic for HBO, with David Mamet directing him in Phil Spector.
Posted by Geoff
at 11:59 PM CDT
Updated: Sunday, May 21, 2017 2:40 PM CDT
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Updated: Sunday, May 21, 2017 2:40 PM CDT
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