Universal Pictures
I don’t usually write about “inside Hollywood” stuff like this, but this is hilarious. So there’s this movie that just started filming this week called Jane Got A Gun. Natalie Portman stars as an Old West woman married to an outlaw who comes home riddled with bullets and his gang (led by Joel Edgerton) on his heels. So she has to reach out to an ex-lover (Michael Fassbinder) to help her defend her farm. Sounds pretty simple, right? What could go wrong?
Try everything.
The movie was scheduled to start shooting on Monday with Scottish director Lynne Ramsay (We Need To Talk About Kevin) behind the camera. Only thing is, when the cast and crew assembled for the first shot of the day, Ramsay wasn’t there. At all. Neither was Michael Fassbinder – three days beforehand, he’d abruptly quit the movie, causing a reshuffling of the parts where Edgerton would now play the ex-lover and Jude Law would be the gang leader. You following this so far?
On Monday, Ramsay quit the project. By Tuesday, Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) had been signed to replace her. And then on Wednesday, Jude Law quit because he wanted to work with Ramsay. Please note that the movie was supposed to be shooting this whole time and everybody is just standing around getting paid while these dummies work their business out. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars going down the toilet for a movie that is probably not going to make that much money.
Now this is where things get really weird. Scott Steindorff, the film’s producer, has been openly talking to the press about the whole deal, which is smart. If you tell the story, you get to own the story, and in Hollywood that’s all that matters. Only one problem: like all of Tinseltown’s fragile ego monsters, he really doesn’t like to have bad things said about him. So he apparently forced his assistant to try to Astroturf positive comments about the story. Filmdrunk has the scoop, but here’s the email:
Filmdrunk
Nice. “My boss will kill me!” That’s totally stable and awesome. Waiting to hear from this assistant, who probably got fired so hard his ass is smoking.
Filming started today on Jane Got A Gun. Odds are 50-50 that a giant meteorite will smash into the set over the weekend.