The trades are reporting that Spike Lee’s production company 40 Acres and a Mule has acquired the rights to Brendan Koerner’s nonfiction book Now the Hell Will Start.
The book told the story of World War II private Herman Perry, a black soldier from Washington, who, after shooting another soldier, went on the run in the Indo-Burmese jungle and eventually became assimilated into tribal culture.
Lee’s company is currently working on a Michael Jordan documentary and is also developing a James Brown biopic.
It looks like negotiations are moving forward for a sequel to Spike Lee’s Inside Man. Universal has placed Terry George in the writer’s seat with Lee set to come back and direct.
Currently called Inside Man 2, the characters played by Clive Owens, bank robber, and Denzel Washington, negotiator, remain in the sequel. However, Lee wants the script to be high-dynamic. Even more than the original.
Lee thought the original script was good but he wants it to be even better with a new high-tension situation.
Broadway musical “Passing Strange” will be filmed by director Spike Lee. The seven Tony nominated musical, which won one for book, will be shot in three performances – two with an audience and the third without.
Critics praised the musical while the box office sales were a challenge. The Tony win has helped the sales a little.
The plan is to air the Broadway musical on a cable net.
Filming is schedule to start July 9th.
“Passing Strange,” the semi-autobiographical rock tuner by musician Stew with music co-written with Heidi Rodewald.
The story focuses on young black artist from L.A. who flees his middle-class upbringing and heads to Amsterdam and Berlin in an attempt to find himself. Show originated at Berkeley Rep in 2006 and played Off Broadway’s Public Theater last year.
While the media have been salivating for the next instalment of the war of words between Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood, many have ignored the context in which it started: the lack of depictions of African-American soldiers in WWII. And Spike Lee is putting his money where his mouth is after directing Miracle at St. Anna, due out in the U.S. on September 26.
The film, based on a novel by James McBride, deals with the 92nd Infantry Division, who were mostly African-American. The plot seems to centre around them being trapped behind enemy lines in Italy, while also referencing the Sant Anna di Stazzema massacre, in which the retreating SS killed 500 or so Italian villagers.
The film looks like Lee’s most ambitious to date. Sure, he recreated the times of Malcolm X, but it feels odd to see a Lee film involve artillary, bombings, and Nazi symbols. The film seems to include a storyline involving a precious sculpture, that is framed by a 1983 murder. There is a similarity between this and Lee’s Inside Man, which was a thriller with a mild historical subtext. However, if Lee is intending to make a similar film, he may risk, like Inside Man, focussing too much on the thrills and less on the chaos and tragedy of war. And while Lee’s intent on representing another side of WWII that most are unfamilar with, unless Lee’s fully explores that particular facet, he may also risk returning to the usual themes of war that have been exhausted already. Nevertheless, Miracle at St. Anna, with Lee’s particular brand of snapshot film-making, looks enticing.
Just when you thought the tension had eased after the war of words between George Clooney and Charlton Heston, or Uwe Boll and everyone, the stage has been set for the battle between legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood, and legendary director Spike Lee.
It all started in Cannes this year, in which Spike Lee (who directed classics such as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X) was promoting the forthcoming WWII movie Miracle at St. Anna, concerning four African-American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Italy. On the subject, Lee criticised Eastwood’s two war film Letters from Iwo Jima, and Flags of Our Fathers, for not representing any of the African-American soldiers who fought in the battle of Iwo Jima. “It was a conscious decision [by Eastwood] not to have any black people”.
Eastwood responded in an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian, and he was not a happy camper. Eastwood said that Flags of Our Fathers was about the men who raised the flag for that iconic picture and that ” [the African-American contingent] didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go, ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Eastwood’s last words on the subject were “A guy like him should shut his face”.
Them’s fighting words, and Lee promptly responded to ABC News: “the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation [.....] come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there”. Lee denied that he suggested that the true story of Flags of our Fathers should be rewritten to feature an African-American character, and “It’s just that there’s not one black in either film. And because I know my history, that’s why I made that observation.”
Personally, I think the situation has been blown out of porportion. Lee has a certain point in that there are no black actors to be seen in Flags (Letters from Iwo Jima is told from the Japanese side), but would their inclusion as essentially extras in the background have made much of a difference? Lee was really making a statement on Hollywood’s depictions of WWII as inaccurate, but to be honest, what does he expect? You can’t get much further from the truth than Hollywood films. Which is why it will be very interesting to see how Miracle at St. Anna fares when it is released in September.
Spike Lee is working on his $43 million Italy-set WWII drama “Miracle at St. Anna,” an eight-minute promo of which was screened for the press and buyers Monday at the Cannes Festival.
Based on book by bestselling U.S. author James McBride, “Miracle” will be completed in late July, with Touchstone Pictures releasing the film stateside on Oct. 10.
The film’s story is a true tale concerns four members of the U.S. Army’s 92nd Division consisting of black soldiers, who in 1944 were trapped in a Tuscan village and had to contend with both racist commanders and the Nazis.
It’s about “black men who at the time when they were still considered second-class citizens in America were fighting the Fascists in Italy and becoming liberators of Italians,” Lee told Daily Variety.
“Miracle” is entirely a European production.
Lee called the films production structure a “miracle” that materialized last year after he was unable to find the “right” money in Hollywood for his planned James Brown biopic and a film about the L.A. riots.
Spike Lee is all set to start shooting a feature-length documentary about Michael Jordan. Director informed a Cannes crowd that he desires to bring the basketball legend to the festival with the documentary next year.
The NBA is financing the documentary along with Lee’s 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks.
Jordan documentary plans to include extensive unseen footage shot by NBA cameras during the final two years in Jordan’s career, the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons. Lee and Jordan previously collaborated on a series of Nike TV commercials.
According to Variety Lee told the Cannes crowd, “Mike wants to come to Cannes, so hopefully we will be here next year.”
The trades are reporting that Spike Lee’s production company 40 Acres and a Mule has acquired the rights to Brendan Koerner’s nonfiction book Now the Hell Will Start.
Just when you thought the tension had eased after the war of words between George Clooney and Charlton Heston, or 
