Summit Entertainment has gone from niche distributor to major distributor seemingly overnight. The studio has had one helluva year with a box office smash in “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” and a critically acclaimed Oscar contender in “The Hurt Locker.” Now, they are looking to cap things off by acquiring one of the more infamous films of the year.
The studio announced today they have acquired the rights to “The Ghost Writer,” the film Roman Polanski was working on when he was arrested. As Polanski’s case has dragged out, the director apparently continued to work on the film from his jail cell. It’s said he sent instructions for the score to composer Alexandre Desplat and now that he’s under house arrest in Switzerland, there’s no doubt he’s probably going over the film again and making further tweaks in advance of its debut at the Berlin Film Festival.
In case you’ve forgotten, here’s the synopsis of the film from the press release:
The movie thriller tells the story of a former British Prime Minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), who is holed up on an island off the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. in midwinter, writing his memoirs. When his long-standing aide drowns, a professional ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) is sent out to help him finish the book. The anonymous ghost writer is quickly drawn into a political and sexual intrigue involving Lang’s wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams) and his aide (Kim Cattrall). Hanging over Lang is the threat of a war crimes trial and a mysterious secret from his past that threatens to jeopardize international relations. The cast also includes Jim Belushi, Robert Pugh and Tom Wilkinson.
As author and screenwriter Robert Harris previously noted, it will certainly be one of the most intriguing films to hit cinemas next year, because of the salacious story behind its making. “Whether the film can rise above the circumstances in which the director now finds himself I don’t know. We will test to the upper limits the notion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Harris said.
As for us, we’re looking forward to it. The cast is first rate and the material sounds meaty. If anything, we’re curious as hell about what Jim Belushi will be doing in the film because that guy hasn’t done anything worth talking about in decades.
Summit will be moving quickly on the project, and plans to release it in the first half of 2010.
A first rate cast? ahem…
Kim Cattrall
Ewan McGregor
Pierce Brosnan
Olivia Williams
and Jim Belushi
that's hardly a dream team of talented actors. It's been years since any of them were in anything even remotely watchable.