Writer-director Walter Hill is one of the great underappreciated auteurs. He can do it all: stylish action, intelligent dialogue, epic scale and intimate relationships. So it’s always good news to announce that he has a new movie, especially when he wrote it himself. Do I want to see him do yet another remake? No. But in this case I am curious to see his take on the classic star vs. star horror flick “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” made famous by Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
“Obviously, our first task is to find the proper casting for the two defining roles,” said Hill, who adapted the original novel by Henry Farrell. The potential casting choices are tantalizing indeed. Meryl Streep vs. Glenn Close come to mind.
Lakeshore Entertainment is funding the movie with principals Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi producing with Adlrich Company’s Adell Aldrich; Robert Aldrich directed the 1962 film from a script by Lucas Heller.
In “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” two aging Hollywood actresses, former child star Jane Hudson (Davis) and her wheelchair-bound 30s movie queen sister Blanche (Crawford), live and fight together in a decrepit Hollywood mansion. Inevitably, tragedy results.
Hill has directed such classics as “The Driver,” “The Warriors” and “48 HRS,” as well as westerns “The Long Riders,” “Wild Bill” and “Geronimo,” and more recently, Emmy-winning TV western “Broken Trail” and action thriller “Bullet to the Head,” to be released by Warner Bros. in February, 2013.
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