Meanwhile a new spy by the moniker, STRIKESTWO has leveled off a bunch of on the level news. Sounds like a mason to me. Let's see what we have in the bag, shall we? Let's do...
1) New Ang Lee project coming on: "To Live On" - a civil war story about partisans - no name cast, small budget, shooting in Kansas and Missouri in the spring. Currently in turn-around at Fox but no worries from his production company (good machine prod). Say they are going to spend most of the money building and burning down the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
2) "Moby Dick" in final stages. Test screening in Japan to raves (but then the Japanese are big into "whale-whacking"). The DP is David Connell (Aussie) currently in London grading the final cut. Gregory Peck is indeed in the film and plays the preacher in the opening scenes. Grading must be finished soon as Connell has a gig in Toronto starting in January shooting there through June (will try to find out the name/subject of the project - Director is Craig Baxley and they are shooting for ABC a mini-series with a budget of $35million - big bucks for tv)
3) Trying to get a second read on the Brad Pitt non-project. Talked to a guy who works with Milius in LA who said that Blake's Custer script "needed a lot of work" and that he thought that was why Pitt jumped ship. Talked to another guy with a film support company in Wilmington, NC (aka Wilmywood) who said that New Line was desperate after having laid out some $2million for the film rights and didn't want to give up yet. A girl who works for a casting company (also in Wilmywood) said that the folks in her office had been "fooling around" with casting for the "A Road..." book and suggesting Tom Cruise for the role of Leutenant Varnum (????) because he's one of the guys who survives the battle at the end.
