Hugh Jackman and Robert Pattinson Are Cowboys?

It's a strange coincidence, but just the other day I was having a conversation with a friend and we turned to each other and said: "Hey, whatever happened to Madeleine Stowe?" Well, she hasn't been making many appearances on the big screen lately, but that doesn't mean she hasn't been busy. Variety has announced that Stowe will be make her directorial debut for Hyde Park Entertainment with the period drama, Unbound Captives. The film stars Rachel Weisz, Hugh Jackman, and Robert Pattinson and centers on a woman, "whose husband is killed and her two children kidnapped by a Comanche war party in 1859."

Stowe wrote the script herself back in 1993 as a starring vehicle, but at the time no one was jumping at the chance to finance the film of an actress and first time screenwriter. But that doesn't mean that the studios didn't like what they saw, because according to Variety, "Fox offered Stowe $3 million, and later $5 million, for her script, with Ridley Scott poised to direct and Russell Crowe to star. She turned down what was among the highest sums offered a first-time scribe because there was no promise she would be anything more than screenwriter." Stowe was convinced that it was better to let the project die on the vine rather than have somebody else mess with her script -- and I have to hand it to her, I doubt I would have been as principled.

But, Stowe finally made a deal with Hyde Park's Ashok Amritraj after he suggested she direct the film rather than star. Weisz will now take over for Stowe in the lead, and Jackman will play a frontiersman who rides to the rescue, with Pattinson stepping in as his son. Personally, I think that it's a strong cast for a period drama (tell me you aren't already picturing Jackman in buckskins ... then again, that just might be me) and considering the story behind the film, I'd love to see it succeed. Not to mention that Stowe did star in one of the best period romances ever made, so if anyone knows how to do 'corsets and longing glances', it would be her.