“Hubris” aka “Idol’s Eye”
Once all that “Blood Meridian” noise died down,” Field turned his attention to “Hubris,” a Universal project that, when it was originally announced, was kept very hush-hush, other than the fact that Bobby Moresco (“Crash,” “10th & Wolf”) was writing the script.
Well, we put our crack team of investigators on the case and dug up a treasure trove of intel. This was a true-crime gangster revenge film based on a 2007 Playboy article titled “Boosting the Big Tuna” by investigative reporter Hillel Levin and based on the FBI-led “Operation Family Secrets” trial, which covered the murders of the men who burglarized Chicago mafia boss Tony Accardo‘s (known as “Big Tuna”) River Forest house in the late ’70s. While Accardo was away on vacation in California in 1978, prowlers brazenly broke into his River Forest home. Within a month, five of the suspected thieves were found brutally murdered and, in some cases, excessively tortured. To cover their tracks, even more killings took place — eventually, even the caretaker of the home disappeared when Chi-town police had enough evidence to bring it before a grand jury in 1978. Over the years, a chain of events led to 18 ruthless murders angled at silencing witnesses and handing out swift mob vengeance (one victim was even Tony Spilotro, the Chicago mob’s Vegas enforcer and the basis for Joe Pesci‘s character in Martin Scorsese‘s “Casino“). Prosecutors believed Accardo was furious that someone had dared to violate his home and ordered the killings. No charges could ever be brought down.
Sounds like great stuff, but this project eventually passed into the unlikely hands of Olivier Assayas, who eyeballed it as his English-language feature debut. The title changed to “Idol’s Eye,” and at one point, it had Robert Pattinson, Robert DeNiro, and Rachel Weisz all slated to start before it fell apart.
Meanwhile, Michael Mann had his own similar-ish project brewing at the same time called “Big Tuna,” which was also about Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana but seemed like a broader biopic take on the gangster. Guess we’ll never know because neither of these projects wound up in front of cameras.
“The Creed of Violence”
Arguably the most wanted of Field’s unmade movies, this seems to have come so close you can almost taste it.
Based on the book by Boston Teran, Field was originally announced to only script Universal’s adaptation of the story that takes place during the Mexican Revolution and focuses on the American intervention in the war and two men — a desperado and a government agent with a secret connection to him — attempting to thwart an arms smuggling ring.
The project seemed to go away for a while until reports sparked in 2011 that Leonardo DiCaprio was interested in starring. It went away again, but then a year later, it was announced that Christian Bale was in negotiations to star. The film gave its last breath in 2019 when it was reported to be filming in early 2020, with Daniel Craig possibly taking the lead, but none of these things came to pass.
“The White Tiger”
In the midst of all this “The Creed of Violence” brouhaha, Field was working on an adaptation of Aravind Adiga‘s Booker Prize-winning novel “The White Tiger,” following the morally corrupting rags-to-riches story of a young Indian man.
So what happened? The Hollywood Reporter has the whole story, but the short version is that Field got caught in a legal battle over whether or not he could make the film he wanted or if one of the backers could reject his script.
In the end, the project wound up at Netflix with a whole new batch of producers, Ramin Bahrani directing, with the finished film landing on the platform in early 2021.
“As It Happens”
Late, celebrated writer Joan Didion doesn’t have many screenplay credits to her name, but they do include “The Panic In Needle Park” and the 1976 version of “A Star Is Born.” But one that won’t make it to her IMDB is “As It Happens.”
Jennifer Fox (“The Bourne Legacy,” “We Need To Talk About Kevin,” “Michael Clayton“) was set to produce, but not much else is known about the project other than it was a political thriller, and Field was only attached to a co-writing and co-producing capacity (though it’s probably a safe bet he was nonetheless eyeballing it as a directorial vehicle).
“Hold On To Me”
Every so briefly eyeballing this to direct, Field slipped into the producer role for this Bonnie and Clyde-esque thriller about a small-town girl who callously leaves her boyfriend behind to chase a modeling career in New York, breaking his heart. But she ends up back home as a waitress and embarks on a life of crime when her ex refuses to take her back.
James Marsh (“The Theory of Everything,” “Man on Wire”) was tapped to direct, with Robert Pattinson and Carey Mulligan starring. The script was penned by Brad Inglesby, who was also behind the earlier unmade project with Field, “Buried,” of which this seems to share some story DNA. At any rate, it seems they just can’t figure out how to make a film together.
“Beautiful Ruins”
A little off the usual path of intense dramas, Todd Field signed up to direct an adaptation of Jess Walters’ best-seller “Beautiful Ruins,” with Imogen Poots lined up to star.
The story kicks off in the spring of 1962 off of the Ligurian Sea and centers on three young characters whose orbit around one another is set in motion by an incident during the shooting of “Cleopatra” with the tale picking up again five decades later, in what is described as a satire of Hollywood culture.
As you might surmise, this also got stuck in development, and was briefly eyeballed by Sam Mendes to direct, who decided to stick around as a producer, and last we heard a couple of years ago, Niki Caro (“Whale Rider,” “McFarland USA”) was going to get behind the camera for Amblin.
“The Battered Bastards Of Baseball”
Perhaps the best fun fact about Todd Field is that, as a teenager, he helped invent Big League Chew when he was working as a batboy for the Portland Mavericks. Esquire has the whole story, and it’s as wild as the baseball team that inspired the incredible 2014 documentary “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” by Chapman and Maclain Way (that, yes, features Field himself).
So it’s not a shock that when the opportunity came to make a feature version, Field stepped up to the plate. It covers all the bases — colorful players, a wild, fight-the-system story, and a love of the game. A bidding war lit up between Columbia Pictures, Fox Searchlight, and DreamWorks, who all wanted to ink a deal with producer Justin Lin to help make the project happen. And needless to say, Field was super enthusiastic about it.
“It would be a great movie if you could get it right,” he told EW in 2014. “If I were to make it, I wouldn’t want to sanitize it, you know? It’s not a Disney movie. There’s a huge amount of heart and a lot of love that was within that team obviously, but it wasn’t a polite situation. [Portland Mavericks owner] Bing [Russell] would come back to haunt anyone who would make a Disney version of the Mavericks.”
It seems like an absolute no-brainer, but for whatever reason, this one is still stuck in the dugout.
