At the post-Oscar bash held by The Weinstein Company and at the Vanity Fair party, it became clear that Harvey Weinstein might well have opportunities to capitalize on the momentum created by The King’s Speech. I ran into Quentin Tarantino, who said that he has completed the script for his Western, and that compared to recent scripts like Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill that took so long to crystallize, this one came together much quicker and just flowed out of him. He wasn’t more descriptive than that before I lost him in the crowd, but my understanding is he’ll deliver within two months and then TWC will begin moving toward a production start.

At the same time, Oscar-winning The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper seems to be getting serious about resuscitating the Deborah Moggach novel Tulip Fever as a possible next directing vehicle. That project had been on the verge of being put in turnaround at Paramount, but the studio could be involved as a co-financier with TWC. The film’s set in 17th Century Amsterdam, where a married woman and an artist hired to paint her portrait begin a passionate affair and gamble on the booming market for tulip bulbs as a way to raise money to run away together. The film has been a passion for such directors  as John Madden and Peter Chelsom over the past decade, and once had Keira Knightley and Jude Law once planning to play the lovers.  Hooper is also mulling Les Miserables among possibles. There was a real sense of company history at the Weinstein bash, as Harvey Weinstein entered to loud applause and immediately engaged in a bro hug with Tarantino, with the likes of Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth and others standing nearby… Read More »