Russell Crowe, Will Smith Attached To Winter’s TalePosted by Wilson Morales
February 1, 2012
According to Vulture, screenwriter-turned-director Akiva Goldsman “called in every favor he had” and landed Russell Crowe and Will Smith for his debut film, ‘Winter’s Tale.’
Deadline.com had previously reported that Goldsman was set to make his feature directorial debut on Winter’s Tale, the 1983 Mark Helprin novel that Goldsman adapted. Warner Bros has set the picture for a spring 2012 start. Goldsman will make the picture after he, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer complete The Dark Tower, the adaptation of the Stephen King novel series for Universal Pictures, which has Javier Bardem in talks to star as mythical gunslinger Roland Deschain. Goldsman wrote that script and is producing The Dark Tower with Grazer and King.
The synopsis for Winter’s Tale is stated below (from Amazon.com)
New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake–orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.
Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.
Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beseiged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.
Goldsman, who won the Oscar for scripting A Beautiful Mind, has previously directed episodes of Fringe, on which he’s a consulting producer.
