Spielberg jumps to direct 'Harvey' remake
Steven Spielberg plans to direct the film adaptation of the Mary Chase Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Harvey," which is about a man who makes friends with a 6½-foot-tall invisible rabbit.
The play was already made into a film back in 1950 that starred Jimmy Stewart and won his co-star, Jospehine Hall, the Academy Award for Best Actress.
According to an article on Variety.com, "The project will be a co-production of 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks, the first pic under the latter's new incarnation. DreamWorks will finance 50% of the production through its new funding relationship with Reliance and distribute either domestic or international through its arrangement with Disney."
Spielberg is looking to start production early next year and will be in search of big name actors, to play the lead role, whose schedules mesh with the movie's intended start dates.
Don Gregory will produce the film. His previous producing credits include the Golden Globe- nominated 1991 television movie, "Fire in the Dark," which starred Olympia Dukakis and Lindsay Wagner. Fox 2000 acquired the rights to "Harvey" last year.
The Variety.com article also mentions, "It's notable that Fox is at the center of the Spielberg film that kicks off the new DreamWorks iteration, as the studio had stayed out of the courtship of DreamWorks when it jumped from Universal to Paramount and then negotiated an exit with U before choosing Disney."
Spielberg has been clamoring to get back behind the camera despite the fact that "Harvey's" script was developed outside of DreamWorks or Paramount. The director of the 2008 smash "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is also eager to direct both the Tony Kushner-scripted Liam Neeson starrer "Lincoln" and the Jeff Nathanson-scripted "The 39 Clues," but those projects have yet to move forward.
The Variety.com article goes on to say, "Fox Chairman Tom Rothman . . . just recently got a draft of the 'Harvey' script -- the first written by novelist Jonathan Tropper -- and sent it to Spielberg, with whom he developed a relationship when they worked on 'Minority Report.'"