Oliver Stone May Return to Vietnam With 'Pinkville'

Back in October we learned that Oliver Stone's next film would be Jawbreaker, another 9/11-related project based on the book by ex-CIA Gary Bernstein. It seemed to make sense at the time, because Stone had just released the 9/11-based World Trade Center. Jawbreaker is likely still going to happen, but there is now another project that the director is possibly taking on first. According to Latino Review, Paramount Vantage has picked up Pinkville (aka "One Day in March"), which will be Stone's return to a subject he knows very well: Vietnam. The studio had been in a bidding war with UA, but Paramount, which handled production on World Trade Center and is also handling Jawbreaker, won out.

The pic, which may star Sean Penn and Channing Tatum, is set around the events of the My Lai Massacre. On March 16, 1968, more than 500 Vietnamese (or 367, depending on the source), including unarmed women, children and elderly, were slaughtered by American soldiers who were given a "search and destroy" order. The horrible mission was eventually reported to the American public in November of 1969, and the news led to increased outrage concerning the Vietnam War. Stone already used the massacre as inspiration for a major scene in Platoon, but apparently he feels there's still more to say, and specifically to say, about the events.

Pinkville, if it happens, will mark Stone's fourth film to directly deal with the Vietnam War (if you don't count his student film, Last Year in Viet Nam, or a less-direct film like Nixon), following the "trilogy" of Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth. It should be a welcome return for the filmmaker, as he is, at least to me, associated with Vietnam (and the '60s and conspiracy theories) in the way that Woody Allen and Scorsese are associated with New York. Plus, the subject matter can now be made to have a different relevance -- both Penn, who starred in the Vietnam film Casualties of War, and Stone are probably interested in displaying parallels between that war and the current war in Iraq.