Mark Bowden Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It doesn't seem to be easy to get to the moon, even with the Prince of Persia attached for the ride. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the Jake Gyllenhaal's untitled lunar action movie, that he signed on for last year, is getting another rewrite.

First, Doug Liman (Jumper), who will direct the film, teamed up with John Hamburg (his cousin, and Along Came Polly writer/director) to whip up the story and write the script. Then, the author of Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden, revamped it. Now, Dan Mazeau has signed on to "bring it in for a landing with a different take 'based on an original story by Liman, Bowden, and Simon Kinberg.'" Apparently something isn't working quite right, although I imagine there has to be something tasty in there somewhere since Gyllenhaal signed on.

What this story covers remains to be seen. All THR says about the plot is that it's an "action film about lunar colonization." IMDb adds a little more, describing it as "An action film centered around one crew's expedition to the moon during a time of frenzied interest in lunar colonization." So, stay tuned for some sort of action-packed, Jake-led, lunar colonization on the big screen, should this rewrite work out.

In another example of adaptation rights being picked up before a book is done, Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream is finally making its way to a feature biopic. Variety reports that Universal has bought the rights to I Am a Man, a book currently being written by Hampton Sides about King's assassination in Memphis, and the hunt for James Earl Ray. The decision was made from an 11-page proposal that's being described as "a compressed historical thriller" by the author, who has a history with the King story -- his father's law firm had repped King, a friend's father was the neurosurgeon who operated on King, and Ray's lawyer was his dad's best friend. Mark Bowden, the pen behind Black Hawk Down and the upcoming Killing Pablo, has already been tapped to adapt it.

As the story goes, King had gone to Memphis to lead a garbage workers protest. While on the balcony of his hotel, he was shot and subsequently died. Two months later, James Earl Ray was caught, and later plead guilty to avoid a trial conviction and death sentence. This seems to be as far as the movie will take it, but considering the studios' addiction to dueling pictures, I wouldn't be surprised if we later see one about his work before, or the aftermath of his assassination. There has been much chatter about a conspiracy theory, which is further strengthened by the fact that King's family believes Ray didn't do it. But that's another story. Is his assassination and the hunt for Ray what you want to see hit the big screen?