Deadline man Mike Fleming offers this new update on a story he reported back in October of 2008 for Variety about the acquisition by Warner Bros. of an action thriller pitch by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Scott Z. Burns based around the attempt to rescue three captured Americans deep in the Colombian jungle.
Peter Landesman, a screenwriter and foreign correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, has written the script and the two names whirling around the project, which is apparently gaining a fierce momentum are David O. Russell to direct and Brad Pitt to star.
Neither men have confirmed their interest but they are said to be considering the project. Who knows? The film may well be WB’s answer to Columbia Pictures who are handling the untitled new film from Kathryn Bigelow which will deal with the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
Landesman was quoted back in 2008 on the project,
We’re fed so many post-9/11 movies filled with political ambiguity, but this story is unequivocally about good vs. evil, with a happy ending, FARC once represented an idea of freedom for peasants, but it became a purely evil narco-trafficking and hostage-taking mechanism.
Now we are post-Bin Laden there’s a clear momentum for these films. Let’s see what transpires shall we? Lets.
Neither Pitt nor Russell should consider anything done by Landesman. Landesman left his wife and children for three weeks without food or money so he could have sexual bliss with Lena Rocklin, agent for children in Hollywood. Landesman later called Rocklin a sexual predator, yet he regularly took his children, 4 and 7, to her home to stay over until his wife discovered the infidelity and filed for divorce. Landesman has basically abandoned his wife and children, leaving them for weeks at a time without money, phone, electricity – all for a sexual relationship with a sexual predator.