There’s no telling which classic property will next strike the remake chord of Hollywood and today brings another surprise. It looks like some major players have recently been fighting over who will again turn John Steinbeck‘s landmark novel into a film, after John Ford delivered his 1940 classic with Henry Fonda in the lead. According to Deadline, a winner has emerged.
They report that Robert Redford was looking to adapt the work into an FX miniseries with Dark Shadows producer David Kennedy, but they lost out to Steven Spielberg and his team at DreamWorks. The company is now in talks with Steinback’s estate for a feature film version, but Spielberg would only be serving as producer, not director. As he’s tied up with the Bradley Cooper-led drama American Sniper next year, he’ll be looking to find a new director to possibly get this remake into theaters by next year’s 75th anniversary of the book.
Considering 20th Century Fox produced the original, we can bet they’ll be involved here as well with DreamWorks. With a story still relatable today, if Spielberg and team can find the right talent, this is a rare remake I’m not completely against. As we await on who else will get attached, check out the synopsis below, if you need a refresher, as well as the trailer for the 1940 film.
A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.
Who would you like to see direct a new version of The Grapes of Wrath?