JohnWilkesBooth Tagged Articles at Cinematical

At least one Civil War / Abraham Lincoln themed film is racing out of the starting gate. a few weeks after it was announced that Robert Redford would be directing The Conspirator, he has his lead actor and actress. According to Variety, James McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn are heading to the courtroom to answer for Mr. Lincoln's assassination.

Penn will be playing the role of Mary Surratt, the lone woman to be part of John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy, and the only woman to be arrested. The Surratts were all Confederate sympathizers, and while her son confessed to being actively involved in plotting Lincoln's assassination, he denied his mother had been. Nevertheless, Mary was tried, convincted, and executed. Mary Surratt is the first woman to have been executed by the U.S. government and it's probably worth noting that while she was described as "a handsome woman," she doesn't resemble Ms. Wright-Penn.

The history makes McAvoy's part a little thankless, as he will be playing Frederick Aiken, Surratt's lawyer. Variety calls him "an idealistic young war hero" though his historical record is actually pretty sketchy. Defending Surratt was his first major case (and since he only lived 13 years longer, he can't have enjoyed many of them). Variety notes that he "reluctantly defends" Surratt, and then comes to believe in her innocence. I imagine the movie will use his real defense speech (which you can read here) which is probably one of the few concrete things Mr. Aiken left behind. The Conspirator begins shooting next month, and should be an interesting period piece. I don't know if it's a replacement for Spielberg's Lincoln biopic but as few know this particular story, maybe it'll encourage a rush of interest in the Civil War.

I'm delighted by today's news that UA is apparently pleased enough with what they've seen of Valkyrie that they've signed screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie to a first look deal. The Usual Suspects is one of my favorite films -- the kind of film that will make me overlook a guy not doing anything of note for the next ten to twelve years of his career -- and what little I've heard about Valkyrie so far has put it at the top of my must-see list for 2008. It's got Carice van Houten, for starters, which should be enough to get anyone into the multiplex. The actual terms of McQuarrie's deal are known only to him and United Artists COO Xenu, but The Hollywood Reporter's writeup says that there are currently "several projects under discussion." One of them, we know, will not be the Alexander the Great biopic that McQuarrie spent much time on, only to be beaten to the punch by Oliver Stone's worst movie ever, and yes, I've seen U-Turn and it's great by comparison.

McQuarrie is currently prepping The Stanford Prison Experiment, a film based on a famous behavioral study conducted at Stanford in the 70s in which students had to play the roles of guards and prisoners and things got out of hands. For some reason, this doesn't really ring my bell -- I can't see how it will work as a sensible movie -- but one thing I love about McQuarrie is his fascination with history and I'm crossing my fingers that he'll use this deal to get his John Wilkes Booth screenplay into the development cycle immediately. What little I know of the script is that people who read it a couple of years ago were floored by it and that its development seemed to follow the same trajectory as the Alexander script -- it was written, it was tossed around and toyed with by some A-list actors and then dropped because of competition concerns. But unless it's flown under my radar, I don't know of any competing Booth film that has made it to the filming stage, so why not do it now? And seriously, raise your hand if you'd rather see McQuarrie's John Wilkes Booth biopic than Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic. Just like I thought -- every hand in the room.