Jackman Film Role Rumors

[jo]

I have always been keen for Hugh to stay within the ambit of action movies ( but not the CGIs/explosions et al type) -- and this is something that sounds like an interesting one for him --

*Spy ( aka CIA) story -- a long time ago, he was also attached to a spy novel adaptation but it did not come off the ground

*Set in Europe( which somehow gives it also a period-piece feel, because of the setting)

*Based on the article, there seems to be a fair amount of drama in the story.

Spy stories still attract a fair amount of attention, given the continuing conflicts in many sides of the world. James Bond will be portrayed for the 25th time (Daniel Craig) soon. How many Bourne movies have been made? I do remember a long time ago where the story was very dramatic because it went against the grain but was lauded ( Spy Who Came In the Cold with RBurton).

Also, it is not often that Hugh plays a man in a relatively contemporary setting ( Prisoners/RealSteel from recent times), so this could be an interesting facet to his acting portrayals.


Hope this becomes reality.


Jo

[jo]

A little more info --

www.empireonline.com/people/hugh-jackman/hugh-jackman-wanted-good-spy/

F. Scott Frazier is busy writing a new draft of the script, which Parkes and MacDonald are hoping passes muster with Jackman and Kormakur. It adapts Kai Bird's biography of Ames, a CIA operative working in the Middle East who saw forming strong relationships as the key to breaking down barriers. But his mission and life were cut short when he was killed in the bombing outside the American Embassy in Beirut in 1983. The film will chronicle his work and personal life.

It's still bubbling away in the development pot, but if Jackman and Kormakur sign on, it should be shooting this year.

[jo]

The director Baltasar Kormakur is from Iceland and seems to be respected for the past work he has done --

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltasar_Kormákur

Check out the honors he has been nominated or won for.


Also --

www.hollywoodpoint.us/baltasar-kormakur-hugh-jackman-circling-the-good-spy-for-parkes-macdonald-image-nation/

Kormakur this Friday opens Adrift, the survival film that stars Shailene Woodley with STX releasing. He is good at handling action in difficult locales, as evidenced by his past films The Deep, Everest, and Contraband.

Btw, Kormakur is also repped by WME.

Jo

[jo]

Interesting that THE GOOD SPY is already listed ( updated on May 22) on IMDB as in PRE-PRODUCTION.


www.imdb.com/title/tt4807444/

Maybe it is further along than what they can publicly announce? Maybe Hugh is still in negotiation?

The producers Parkes/McDonald IMAGE NATION have produced a good amount of movies, including all the MEN IN BLACK series, Catch Me If You Can ( DiCaprio and Spielberg), Roman Israel, Esq ( film for which Denzel Washington earned his recent Oscar nomination).

[jo]

Highlights of the book THE GOOD SPY by Kai Bird from Amazon.

The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history – a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West.

On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East – CIA operative Robert Ames. What set Ames apart from his peers was his extraordinary ability to form deep, meaningful connections with key Arab intelligence figures. Some operatives relied on threats and subterfuge, but Ames worked by building friendships and emphasizing shared values – never more notably than with Yasir Arafat’s charismatic intelligence chief and heir apparent Ali Hassan Salameh (aka “The Red Prince”). Ames’ deepening relationship with Salameh held the potential for a lasting peace. Within a few years, though, both men were killed by assassins, and America’s relations with the Arab world began heading down a path that culminated in 9/11, the War on Terror, and the current fog of mistrust.

Bird, who as a child lived in the Beirut Embassy and knew Ames as a neighbor when he was twelve years old, spent years researching The Good Spy. Not only does the book draw on hours of interviews with Ames’ widow, and quotes from hundreds of Ames’ private letters, it’s woven from interviews with scores of current and former American, Israeli, and Palestinian intelligence officers as well as other players in the Middle East “Great Game.”

What emerges is a masterpiece-level narrative of the making of a CIA officer, a uniquely insightful history of twentieth-century conflict in the Middle East, and an absorbing hour-by-hour account of the Beirut Embassy bombing. Even more impressive, Bird draws on his reporter’s skills to deliver a full dossier on the bombers and expose the shocking truth of where the attack’s mastermind resides today.

This sounds even more interesting because it delves more intimately on the character of Robert Ames.


Hope it gets to be a Jackman film project!

[jo]

An actual review of the book, with a photo of Robert Ames ( who perished at age 49 in the Beirut Embassy bombing).

It gives a more intimate look into who Robert Ames was, which could be an excellent film subject.


www.thenation.com/article/our-orbit-tolerance-ambiguity/

[mamaleh]

The fact that Ames was friendly with well-known terrorist Arafat and his heir apparent Salameh (orchestrator of the massacre of Israel’s team at the 1972 Olympics in Munich) based on their “shared values” gives me pause. I just hope the film is a fair representation of Ames and not a whitewash. Unlike a fanciful musical such as THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, this spy movie aims to offer an authentic portrait.

Ellen

[jo]

The book reviews details some of the insights from the book --

In Our Orbit: A Tolerance for Ambiguity
In The Good Spy, Kai Bird documents the life of CIA agent Robert Ames, a sincere and unlikely mediator in the Middle East.
By Cecilia D’AnastasioTwitter
July 29, 2014

An effective covert operative, like a gifted emergency physician, must have a high tolerance for ambiguity. In murky situations fraught with intellectual or ethical unknowns, the professional resolutely makes life-or-death decisions to prevent lasting injury to the body or the body politic. But what distinguishes the good spy from the gifted doctor is an appreciation for the usefulness of ambiguity.

In December 1969, Robert Ames, a model US patriot and high-ranking CIA Arabist, began courting the “Red Prince,” Ali Hassan Salameh, whose other epithets in Kai Bird’s The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (Crown; $26)—”warlord,” “terrorist,” “guerrilla fighter”—are not quite as high-toned. Considered complicit in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, among other Black September attacks, Salameh was high up in the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization when Ames conveyed a “strict warning” that the Israelis had ordered a hit on him in his Beirut apartment. Salameh laughed it off, not expecting that the assassins would be able to power through three armed security units. But after a close call, the “Old Man,” Yasir Arafat—Salameh’s direct supervisor—remarked, “Okay, whatever Bob says from now on, it is like it is written in the Koran.”

It’s easy to assume from The Good Spy that Bird, a Nation contributing editor and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, shares this sentiment. A youthful bystander of sorts to Ames’s apparently innocuous existence in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Bird identifies perhaps too obviously with the predilections of his subject. Several years ago, in Crossing Mandelbaum Gate, Bird described his childhood as the son of an American diplomat in East Jerusalem, where on his way to school he daily crossed the barriers that divided Arabs from Jews; here, his account of a politically remote Middle East contrasts with celebrations of Ames’s all-American altruism toward dispossessed Palestinians. Ames emerges as a paragon of cross-cultural empathy, an idol. But, deceptively, The Good Spy is an elegy not just for Ames but also for what he stood for: an unobstructed channel between a stigmatized people and the Oval Office.

From the start, Ames was an unlikely Middle East peacemaker. Cowboy boots fastened to his feet, he voted Republican, opened letters to his blond, blue-eyed wife with “Dear Bonnie and babies,” and closed them with a fervent “God love you all.” Assigned to the Army’s Middle East Signal Communications Agency in 1957 while working for a Texas construction company, Ames shipped out to Kagnew Station in a far-flung region of Eritrea, now part of Ethiopia, and immediately became hooked. He began studying Arabic at a time when doing so pigeonholed him as an intellectual, and in 1960 he was offered work at the CIA. Alan Wolfe, one of Ames’s operations officers, once remarked that “learning a wog language [is] a waste of time.” He was wrong: by 1977, half of Ames’s professional meetings were in Arabic. His facility with the language and with Arab peoples proved useful as he scaled the ranks of the CIA, ultimately earning a seat at President Reagan’s briefing table.

Lest Ames be lumped in with all the profit-seeking philistines who, Bird implies, dominated the ranks of covert ops, the book’s painstakingly collected anecdotes establish his dedication to cultivating genuine trust between himself and his informants (Salameh was even code-named MJTRUST/2). Sipping tea and chewing khat in the style of a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia—he was offered the coveted lamb’s eye during Bedu meals—Ames tried hard to translate his culture-bridging efforts in the Middle East into good policy decisions in Washington. Ever a little defensive of his subject, Bird assures us that Ames “was not guilty of the shallow Orientalism skewered by the late professor Edward Said.” But his grand hopes for mediating between American/Israeli and Palestinian interests—an agenda considered respectable at one point and naïve at another—were deflated when Reagan wondered aloud to his Arabist briefers: “But they are all terrorists, aren’t they?”


According to some, Salameh was. The agency, hell-bent on turning sources into assets, hoped to solve the problem of trusting a “terrorist”—another category fraught with ambiguity—by throwing money at him. And it was Salameh’s refusal to “sign receipts” for his meetings with Ames that prevented US officials from acknowledging to the Israelis, keen for a PLO scalp, that Salameh was of value to the CIA. An intolerance of ambiguity (and paperwork), Bird implies, kindled the fireball that enveloped Ali Hassan Salameh in his Chevrolet in 1979. As for Ames’s fading hopes for a Mideast reconciliation, they perished along with him in the 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut.

It is impossible to emphasize enough the scrupulousness of Bird’s efforts in The Good Spy, just as it is impossible to fathom how he tracked down someone like Jack Harmer, who lived near Ames as a boy and admired his childhood basketball prowess; by the end of the book, it is apparent that this doggedness was a labor of love. The book, though, is bittersweet, lamenting the impotence of the good spy in the grand scheme of US foreign policy. For all of Ames’s admirable efforts, it is hard to believe that he could have translated his own particular tolerance for ambiguity into broad-scale political action. But as Graham Fuller, a clandestine-service officer, reminds us: “And then the revelation hits you that U.S. foreign policy is not fact-driven.”

The script is being rewritten.

But the filming will have the Pulliter Prize-winning book author Kai Bird as a consultant.

If the movie becomes a Jackman project, maybe I will pick up the book and eventually compare how the retelling in a movie compares with it. Although if the movie does happen with Hugh, that will not be released till sometime in 2019.

Still, an interesting possibility in Hugh's new career path ( and it looks like he is choosing the less-travelled road).

[jo]

Still a rumor... or is Hugh already attached to play the lead role in BAD EDUCATION?


deadline.com/2018/06/allison-janney-hugh-jackman-bad-education-automatik-cory-finley-1202411362/

Allison Janney In Talks To Join Hugh Jackman In Automatik and Sight Unseen’s ‘Bad Education

by Anita Busch

June 15, 2018 10:52


EXCLUSIVE: Allison Janney is in talks to join Hugh Jackman in Automatik’s Bad Education, a feature based on a true story from I Think We’re Alone Now screenwriter Mike Makowsky and director Cory Finley (Thoroughbreds). The story, which is based on Makowsky’s own high school experience, follows Frank Tassone, a superintendent of the school district who works for the betterment of the student’s education while embezzling public funds to live the life he wants.

Jackman is attached to play Tassone while Janney portrays the school district business manager who is in on the scheme and enjoying the same living large lifestyle while helping him (and her) to cover their tracks.
Fred Berger (La La Land) and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Midnight Special) of Automatik are set to produce with Sight Unseen’s Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev and Oren Moverman.


Janney, who won an Oscar for her work as the controlling and abusive mother in I, Tonya, will first star in the Bert & Bertie-directed Troupe Zero with Jim Gaffigan. The seven-time Emmy winner can currently be seen on the CBS series, Mom, which was just picked up for a sixth season. Those dates would have to be worked out in order for Janney to join the project.

Janney is repped by The Gersh Agency, Thruline Management and law firm Nelson Davis.

[jo]

www.looper.com/126154/allison-janney-bad-education/

Excerpts

The story for the film is based on Makowsky's own high school experience. The movie will star Jackman as Frank Tassone, a superintendent of a school district who leads a dual life. On the one hand, he pushes constantly for the betterment of his students' education, but on the other, he's embezzling funds from the school for his own personal enrichment. Janney's character assists him in his scheme and uses her smarts to help them cover their tracks.

If you have read an early script review posted here, the dual life is even more startling!


SPOILER ALERT******SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT

scriptshadow.net/screenplay-review-bad-eduction-new-top-15-script/

[jo]

Just a thought -- if THE GOOD SPY, for which Hugh has also been reported to have expressed interest in, is supposed to be waiting for a script rewrite ( it is listed as in Pre-Production on IMDB), could Hugh be doing this as a back to back project after BAD EDUCATION? Presumably, BAD EDUCATION will not be a long shoot ( like THE FRONT RUNNER) because it is mainly drama and will not require difficult-to-film scenes or exceptional sets, while given that pre-production for THE GOOD SPY will be more intensive and take longer ( foreign locales/action scenes preparation/production design/ script rewrite), they could be sequential Jackman projects?

Just wondering...and hoping that after two film projects, Hugh could be ready for a return to Broadway?


Jo

[jo]

I have no idea how true this is --

But this could be another interesting but controversial project in the future, working with the former Wachowski Brothers. I think The Front Runner is described as " a political comedy" while this tweet talks about " a political thriller".

Who knows? It looks like that Hugh is getting quite a number of script possibilities these days


Jo

[jo]

Director Baltasar Kormakur talks about his current release ( ADRIFT) --




but


At 4'37", he is asked about a potential project THE GOOD SPY, with Hugh Jackman. He talks a bit about the subject but there doesn't seem to be an official confirmation yet because he says he has other projects in the pipeline.

Although IMDB already lists THE GOOD SPY as in pre-production ?


Jo

[jo]

Speculation on why Hugh was seen doing some riding at Centennial Park, supposedly in preparation for an upcoming role?


www.justjared.com/2018/08/06/hugh-jackman-practices-his-riding-skills-for-an-upcoming-film-role/





The Good Spy - will still have to read the book ( when it arrives ).

Bad Education - I don't recall that as a particular hobby of Frank Tassone??


Hmmm....

[ruby]

Aug 6, 2018 8:10:31 GMT -5 jo said:

Speculation on why Hugh was seen doing some riding at Centennial Park, supposedly in preparation for an upcoming role?


www.justjared.com/2018/08/06/hugh-jackman-practices-his-riding-skills-for-an-upcoming-film-role/





The Good Spy - will still have to read the book ( when it arrives ).

Bad Education - I don't recall that as a particular hobby of Frank Tassone??


Hmmm....

100% guarantee that those pictures posted are from his training for Australia many years ago . If he was sighted recently, these are not evidence of it.

I remember these shots. Note the length of his hair.

[jo]

"Australia" was filmed before he relocated to NYC - so sometime in 2008. Ten years ago -- who unearthed the photos? LOL! I do remember that he was training at Centennial Park. Yet the news is being re-tweeted by so many

Could the speculations have been related to his visit to Broome ( wasn't that one of the filming locales for AUSTRALIA?)

Time has certainly passed! Since then, he has done the Oscars hosting/A Steady Rain/Real Steel/Back on Broadway/Les Miserables/Prisoners/The Wolverine/Days of Future Past/Chappie/another Tonys hosting/The River/Broadway To Oz/Logan/The Greatest Showman.

Jo

[njr]

Plus, his beard now has a ton of gray in it!

[hu4601]

Aug 6, 2018 8:52:23 GMT -5 ruby said:

Aug 6, 2018 8:10:31 GMT -5 jo said:

Speculation on why Hugh was seen doing some riding at Centennial Park, supposedly in preparation for an upcoming role?


www.justjared.com/2018/08/06/hugh-jackman-practices-his-riding-skills-for-an-upcoming-film-role/





The Good Spy - will still have to read the book ( when it arrives ;) ).

Bad Education - I don't recall that as a particular hobby of Frank Tassone??


Hmmm....

100% guarantee that those pictures posted are from his training for Australia many years ago . If he was sighted recently, these are not evidence of it.

I remember these shots. Note the length of his hair.

   

    Agree. These are definitely old shots from the Australia period, however it's possible that he was seen in Centennial Park riding, even for recreation, as the park is only a 10 minute drive from Bondi Beach and a quick walk from Bondi Junction. 

[jo]

Not even a hint of a rumor -- but on many fans's wish lists on twitter!

Feb 26, 2020 18:32:28 GMT -5 jo said:

Only remotely related news to LOGAN --

but if this happens - great news for James Mangold's career! JM may take over Spielberg's "whip" in the next installment of the INDIANA JONES franchise movies!



variety.com/2020/film/news/steven-spielberg-indiana-jones-5-james-mangold-harrison-ford-1203515698/


Harrison Ford is attached...but could there be a role for Hugh in the movie? Quite a few have tweeted such a wish - even as a main villain

Indiana Jones 5 is expected to hit theaters on July 9, 2021.

Except The Music Man may be in the way

Unless he could join them while he is free ?

I know - wishful thinking -- but Hugh himself has said that INDIANA JONES was one of the, if not the, favorite movies of his youth!


Jo

[jo]

Not a rumor -- but a fancasting demand! LOL!

Be forewarned -- this is for a TV series on HBO!


www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/03/07/the-internet-has-already-decided-which-actor-should-play-joel-in-hbos-the-last-of-us/#6bc08d212c32

Editors' Pick|12,675 views|Mar 7, 2020,08:47am EST

The Internet Has Already Decided Which Actor Should Play Joel In HBO’s ‘The Last Of Us’

Paul TassiSenior Contributor


This week, HBO announced that it is developing a show based on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which is much better news than when Sony Pictures was floating around a movie for the last several years.

Furthermore, it seems quite reassuring that it’s being handled by Neil Druckmann, who made the game, and Craig Mazin, who did HBO’s Chernobyl.

Yesterday, I wrote an article about six actresses I could see playing Ellie who were not Ellen Page ten years ago. I think I have some good choices there, but the other big role is obviously Joel. And yet almost as soon as this news that was announced, the internet seemed to make its choice.


There were three names trending as HBO announced its Last of Us show: Joel, Ellie and Hugh Jackman.
Yep, that’s the pick. Almost immediately, everyone wanted to see Hugh Jackman take on the role of Joel.

It makes sense in many ways, of course. Jackman has the look. He’s around the right age (Joel is supposed to be mid-to-late 40s, Jackman is 51). And he’s the kind of A-lister you can see leading a project like this, like how Netflix picked Henry Cavill to be Geralt for its Witcher series.

You also have the fact, which you can view as a pro or a con, that Hugh Jackman kind of already played a “Joel” role in Logan, where he was tasked with escorting little Laura around in a very similar dynamic. It should not surprise you that Laura actress Dafne Keen was also on my shortlist to play Ellie. Though putting the two of them together would…probably be too much Logan referencing for one cast. Same actors, same relationship, more or less.

But pair Jackman with one of my other choices? Sure, I could see Jackman with Storm Reid or Millie Bobby Brown as Ellie. And I think he is definitely someone that HBO should pursue for this, particularly since he’s now hung up his Wolverine claws.


I don’t think he’s the only option for Joel, of course. And I don’t think you need to pick someone that looks exactly like Joel to fill that part, aka white dude with brown hair and a scruffy beard. There are plenty of guys you could pick who could grow a beard and fill that part. Viggo. Keanu. Gyllenhaal. Gerard Butler. And so on. From HBO’s own stash I am thinking about The Leftovers’ Justin Theroux as a possible option. From Game of Thrones, Rory McCann (The Hound) although he had a similar dynamic with Arya already (once upon a time Maisie Williams was rumored to play Ellie).


The point is there are a lot of options past Hugh Jackman, and yet it does say something that everyone immediately thought of him as soon as this news was announced, where there wasn’t a similar rallying cry for a particular Ellie. Like most fan casting, I would be surprised if this actually came to pass, but who knows. Stay tuned.

*Fans still want him to come back as Wolverine. If that is no longer feasible, the Joel role could be the next best thing.

*Fans loved LOGAN...and LAST OF US is evocative of that movie for many.

*Fans want to see Hugh Jackman back in action movies.


*He does have the most charismatic beard in all of filmdom



Jo

[mamaleh]

Wasn’t HJ supposed to be in a movie adaptation of “Six Years” once upon a time?

deadline.com/2020/05/netflix-david-ayer-direct-harlan-coben-novel-six-years-1202929097/

Ellen

[jo]

Yes, Hugh was attached to SIX YEAR then.

The recent deal ( with David Ayer) was picked up by Netflix -- will we see Hugh pick up the role? It is centric on the male lead - so it might be a good prospect for the next Hugh film.

Jo

[njr]

May 7, 2020 16:05:01 GMT -5 mamaleh said:

Wasn’t HJ supposed to be in a movie adaptation of “Six Years” once upon a time?

deadline.com/2020/05/netflix-david-ayer-direct-harlan-coben-novel-six-years-1202929097/

Ellen

That sounds interesting - would like to see Hugh in it!

Nancy

[mamaleh]

Looks like in its new iteration there's a completely new cast.

Ellen

[jo]

Not sure about the veracity of the rumor --

For one, Hugh says he is committed for a whole year for The Music Man. If this is a rolling commitment... i.e., one year from previews ( depends on when it opens for previews) or up to one year from original schedule ( even if it is delayed) that means up to Sept 2021.

Hades is the main villain...and James Wood got strong reviews for his animation work when the movie was an animated musical.

Also, will Hugh be interested to do a musical where the subject is not about his character?


Or are people just name-dropping him, because he is the most popular/successful film actor in movie musicals these days?


Jo