By the time the project was picked up for producer Rudin by Paramount in December 1995, ''it came with a tremendous cost because Savoy had spent so much money not making the movie,'' says Rudin. In addition, ''the script needed a tremendous amount of work.''
Still, everything seemed to be in place early this year, with John Boorman (Beyond Rangoon) directing Sling Blade's Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton (Twister). But when Paramount chairman Sherry Lansing and Rudin disagreed on the budget, the production missed its window to go west in time for snow -- an element crucial to the plot. Paramount and Rudin have since come to an agreement, and Rudin hopes that the same cast will be able to reassemble next January.
Evans' The Horse Whisperer, on the other hand, has suffered from the possibility of too much snow -- a result of taking too long to put the movie into production. A melodramatic tale about a mother and daughter's relationship with an equine and its trainer, The Horse Whisperer was bought by Disney in 1994, when it was only half written, for $3 million, on behalf of director-star Robert Redford. In the last two years, the studio has reportedly spent another million for a script by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), only to order it rewritten by Richard LaGravenese (The Mirror Has Two Faces). In the meantime, Natalie Portman signed on to play the daughter but dropped out because of scheduling conflicts; Emma Thompson considered playing the mother but never signed on. A planned July 1996 start date reportedly was scrapped, in part, because filming couldn't be completed before Montana's snow season began. Finally, with Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) set to star, production is scheduled to begin this month.
Unlike Smith, Evans decided from the beginning that he wanted nothing to do with writing the script: ''I suppose what I did was look ahead and imagine how I might feel having done a couple of drafts and being told it's not working out,'' says the author. ''I would feel completely miserable. I know the writer of the original material, in this case a book, is usually not the best person to adapt it. I'm too close to it to be able to make the streamlining that is absolutely crucial to turning a book into a movie.''
Rudin is suffering from that very problem -- how to make a massive novel into a two-hour movie -- with Caleb Carr's The Alienist, a historical epic about a mysterious serial murderer stalking the streets of New York City at the turn of the century. ''This on the surface, to me, looked much more straight ahead than it turned out to be,'' says Rudin, for whom Paramount bought the movie rights for less than $500,000. ''Part of it is what happens when you buy a book that's 600 pages long and you have to boil it down and say, 'What is the narrative?' '' Rudin has hired three screenwriters to write drafts; in addition to the inherent size issue, there's also the problem of creating a leading male role in what is essentially an ensemble piece. ''I think it needs a star [because] it's a big, expensive movie,'' Rudin says ruefully. ''And part of the difficulty is in creating a star role [that is showy enough] for a Ralph Fiennes or a Daniel Day-Lewis.'' Plus, there's the part of the villain. ''You don't have a Hannibal Lecter,'' says Rudin. ''You have a guy who, until the end of the movie, you can only see from the back.''
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