When it comes to the top-class of Hollywood writers, it doesn’t get much higher than Eric Roth. After winning an Oscar for Forrest Gump, the writer has gone on to be nominated for The Insider, Munich and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He has another huge contender in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close this December, while Variety reports on another tentpole project he is in talks for.
Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin is bringing on board Roth for their sweeping adaptation of Cleopatra. It would be a re-team with his Benjamin Button director David Fincher for the period epic that has had Angelina Jolie attached to lead for the start. The project has gone through a number of directors, from James Cameron to Paul Greengrass, with Fincher interested since last spring.
Brian Helgeland (Green Zone, Man of Fire, L.A. Confidential) wrote the first draft form Stacy Schiff‘s Cleopatra: A Life novel. Check out Rudin’s previous comments on the project below.
“It is a completely revisionist Cleopatra, a much more grown-up sophisticated version. She’s not a sex kitten, she’s a politician, strategist, warrior. In the Joseph Mankiewicz movie, Elizabeth Taylor is a seductress, but the histories of Cleopatra have been written by men. This is the first to be written by a woman. It felt like such a blow-the-doors-off-the-hinges idea of how to tell it, impossible to resist.”
Once Roth officially comes aboard, he is set to commence writing Cleopatra while Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close hits theaters on December 25th. David Fincher‘s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Angelina Jolie‘s directorial debut In The Land of Blood and Honey both hit theaters a few days before.
What do you think about Roth scripting Cleopatra? Would you like to see Fincher direct?