While not really “gone” for so long — How Do You Know, forgotten as it may be, is still under three years old — and, further to the point, still a public figure by all means (e.g. opening the Best Picture envelope every year), Jack Nicholson is very much missed in the current cinematic landscape, to the point that initial news of his retirement immediately sent waves of shock and sadness across Hollywood. That, thankfully, turned out to be no more than the result of an errant comment from an unnamed source, yet the notice that he was still hoping to make feature films would only lead to one question: when are we going to see them?
An answer may be right around the corner: according to THR, Tom Cruise is making a “last-ditch effort” to reunite with his Few Good Men co-star on El Presidente, a pending comedy that Doug Liman (the former’s Edge of Tomorrow director) is on tap to helm for Warner Bros. The film’s logline is not nearly as interesting as the story behind this deal, which saw both the lead and director visit Nicholson‘s house in an attempt to convince him their worthy of collaboration — to the extent that Cruise reportedly said he “won’t do the movie without him.” Although there’s no word on whether or not it’ll actually happen (as the whole “approach” aspect of this story ought to tell you), the script — from Jesse Armstrong (In the Loop, Four Lions) and Daniel J. Goor (Parks and Recreation), with rewrites by Paul Attanasio (The Good German, Donnie Brasco) — is in his hands, and it’s more than most projects can lay claim to.
About said plot: it’d see Cruise play “a straight-arrow Secret Service agent” tasked, quite comedically, with looking after a disgraced former President (Nicholson, ideally) whose penchant for booze and women must be put aside when a threat is put on his life. If the off-season legend makes a return for the project, count me just the slightest bit optimistic about what follows from that point.
Do you think Nicholson should come back to the big screen, and might El Presidente be the title with which to stage it?