Posted on 07/08/2005 9:27:05 PM PDT by doug from upland
Nicolas Cage to star in upcoming 9/11 movie Fri Jul 8, 2005 7:50 PM ET
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Nicolas Cage will star as a real-life policeman who survived the collapse of the World Trade Center in what would be one of Hollywood's first films to dramatize the Sept. 11 attacks on America, Paramount Pictures said on Friday.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone is on board to direct the untitled movie, which centers on the story of the last two men -- a pair of Port Authority police officers -- rescued from the rubble of the twin towers, Paramount said.
The two officers, Sgt. John McLoughlin and William Jimeno, sold their life rights to the studio, providing the basis for the original screenplay by relative newcomer Andrea Berloff.
Cage, who won an Academy Award for "Leaving Las Vegas," will play McLoughlin. No other casting decisions have been made, Paramount said.
The Viacom Inc.-owned studio has given producers the go-ahead to begin work on the film, getting an apparent leg up on another 9/11 feature in development at rival studio Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp.
Columbia announced in February it had optioned screen rights to "102 Minutes," a book by two New York Times reporters chronicling the interval between the crash of the first hijacked airliner into the World Trade Center and the collapse of the first tower.
No director or actors have been signed to the "102 Minutes" project, but Columbia has received a first script draft by Billy Ray, the writer and director behind "Shattered Glass," according to Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety.
Word that Paramount had a film in the works dramatizing the 9/11 attacks came a day after London was rocked by a series of deadly bomb blasts that renewed anxieties about terror threats. A studio insider said the timing of its announcement was less than "ideal," precipitated only because Variety broke the story in its Friday edition.
The fact that at least two major studios have embraced the subject of 9/11 marks a huge shift in Hollywood's attitude toward depiction of the suicide hijackings that claimed nearly 3,000 lives and prompted the U.S. global war on terrorism.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, studios and broadcasters steered clear of any themes considered evocative of the tragedy. The trend has gradually swung the other way.
Until now, stories about 9/11 have remained the province of film and TV documentaries, television dramas, or in big-screen fiction like Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" featuring 9/11-like imagery.
ABC is planning a miniseries drama based on the "9/11 Commission Report," the best-selling official government account of events surrounding the attacks. NBC recently pulled the plug on a similar project.
Oliver Stone?
The chances of this movie NOT blaming America for 9/11 in some significant way are zero.
Whew a 3 hour conpiracy theory on how it was really the Israeli's who were behind 9/11.
Hollywood is freaking nuts.
I enjoy Cage a great deal. I hope Stone does not screw up this thing, but it wouldn't surprise me.
As soon as I read "Oliver Stone" I had no need to read more. You are right on target.
You know Stone will have Bush being at fault for this movie with America taking second fiddle for the blame.
On another note, who will be homosexual in this movie? The two officers? Maybe Osama?
Hollywood has a death wish second only to a homicide bomber. Oliver Stone? The guy that thinks America is to blame for 9/11? That we deserved it? Where will it be shown, at the anti-American museum the left hopes to put at ground zero?
How much drugs can these people do?
I love Nicholas Cage too. Very intense actor, vastly underrated. He should have turned down this project, though. Anything produced by Oliver Stone should go directly into the Kmart $1.99 discount bin.
No, they were waiting for a nice period of time before they made a movie about 9-11 and how Americans were to blame and how Atta and his gang are heroes.
When I saw Nicholas Cage was in it, I thought, "Great!" But Oliver Stone? Oh, boy....
Stone's conspiratorial invective is going to get hundreds or thousands more humans killed, when the movie opens in Muslim countries and inflames the "street", and again, when 2 years from now segments of the movie are used by terrorists recruitment montage videos.
Otherwise semi-literate semi-educated Americans and Europeans believe Stone's "JFK" is the real version of events. Stone's whacked out interpretation won't do no favors for the lives of America's future first responders.
So what are the odds that the heroic policeman played by Nicholas Cage turns out to be a homosexual?
His "stardom" is simply an accident of birth. He has an uncle who owns the game.
Oliver Stone will probably have Ward Churchill write the screen play; you can count on an anti-American, "Bush-knew", rant.
Good grief. Stone will have President Bush personally flying the planes into the Towers by remote control while Dick Cheney chants "Halliburton " in the background.
With Oliver Stone it will be the Israelis and both George Bushes behind it. The Rothschilds and their puppet Trilateral Commission are going to doom us all.
Hollywood is freaking nuts.
Hollywood is also freaking sane people.:)
I agree that Cage (born Coppola) had connections. But to quote Eddie Murphy in "Coming to America," - "That boy has talent!"
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