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EXCLUSIVE: Akiva Goldsman is set to make his feature directorial debut on Winter’s Tale, the 1983 Mark Helprin novel that Goldsman adapted. Warner Bros has set the picture for a spring 2012 start. Goldsman will make the picture after he, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer complete The Dark Tower, the adaptation of the Stephen King novel series for Universal Pictures, which has Javier Bardem in talks to star as mythical gunslinger Roland Deschain. Goldsman wrote that script and is producing The Dark Tower with Grazer and King.
Goldsman, who won the Oscar for scripting A Beautiful Mind, has previously directed episodes of Fringe, on which he’s a consulting producer. Helprin’s novel is a story that centers around a thief, a dying girl and a flying white horse in 19th Century and contemporary Manhattan. Goldsman sparked to the fantasy element of the tale, and the fact that it is an unabashed love letter to the city where he grew up. The picture is a large scale $75 million effort, and Warner Bros is about to cast up the key roles including Peter Lake, the orphaned mechanic who tries to rob a palatial West Side mansion. And the young dying girl who meets him there, who he becomes determined to save. CAA reps Goldsman.
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Nice to see Akiva back in the saddle after the sad and sudden passing of his wife.
Wishing him the very best of luck on this next project!
Brilliant writer. Horrible Director. The episodes of “Fringe” that he directed were unwatchable. Isn’t being a wonderful writer/ producer enough?
I eagerly await the output of the mind behind the scripts to Lost In Space, Batman & Robin, The Da Vinci Code, I, Robot, and Angels & Demons.
I’m assuming your being facetious. If so, then I concur. Batman & Robin was a real weiner.
Picking up on some sarcasm Matthew. It is sad that his wife died but that doesn’t mean he should be directing a movie from a book that is so far beyond what film can do.
holy shit
that sound you can hear is WB flushing $75m down the toilet
What a truly great novel. Melissa Matheson was attached to it back in the day. Hard not to wish Goldsman luck. Hard not to expect the results won’t be pretty. (And 75 million isn’t half enough to put that novel on the screen.)
Wasn’t Akiva going to make his directorial debut on MAN & WIFE? What is the status of that? (Or, for that matter, his first directorial debut — THE HA HA?)
The broody, sweeping, Narnia-esque orchestral themes that will score this trailer shall adequately drown out the sound of the script pages churning through The Machine.
@Matthew or the scribe of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and ‘Cinderella Man’ two WGA nom scripts and one Oscar winner.
Will the leftist hack Goldsman be let in on the secret about the book? It’s written by a conservative and the the guts of the book are conservative tenants. He will blow this one for sure, what a horrible move.
There are many things missing from this article. For one thing, Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale” is a joy, and a masterpiece. I reread it every few years, and have given away countless copies. The prose is exquisite—you’ll mark passages and read aloud from it—while the story is funny and strange and exhilarating and in the end, deeply moving. Some might also be interested to know that Helprin is a controversial figure in literature, being a political conservative who nonetheless writes books about men who don’t conform to the rules of the world. When the novel came out in 1983, Martin Scorsese was attached to direct the movie version, but he never could get a handle on the story’s scope, much less find fashion a workable budget. And he was probably too mean (thematically speaking) for a book so transcendent. In those days, special effects technology wasn’t advanced enough to tackle Helprin’s prose pictures. (Peter & Beverly on the “Lake of the Coheeries!) I suspect that Scorsese’s forthcoming fantasy film, “Hugo Cabret”, is infused with a bit of “Winter’s Tale” spirit. I’m sad that a true film artist isn’t filming this book, but at least it might send people to the novel.Did I mention how much I love it?
The book is 673 pages long.
Say, Jef, I don’t remember any “conservative tenants” in WT. Was there a rent/lease subplot I missed?
Must have been duking it out with the conservative
landlords or upstate with the leftist hicks
im thinking of a word you can’t say on an airplane…. hmmmmm….
Akiva is a Riddler. Never know what to expect from him.
this is a gorgeous, epic story. i don’t know how it’ll turn out,
but i would like to see that movie.
I’ve never heard of this book, but based on the comments here I’m going to buy it today. It’s rare to find a wonderful fantasy novel that’s not completely derivative.
And that may be the silver lining in this story. Whether or not the film gets made, at least the newfound publicity will draw readers to this work. A book with a truly great story can withstand any number of mediocre movie adaptations (cf. all the various versions of Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL, many of which are horrendous). In the end perhaps it will be the word and not the cinematic image that survives.
This is my single favorite novel of all time, hands down, bar none. I re-read it every couple/ three years and like another mentioned earlier, I give it as a gift. A lot. I’ve read other Helprin novels and enjoyed them, though none nearly as much as Tale.
I enjoyed the novel enough to look into the author and as mentioned his real life persona is…not so much to my liking. But damn if the guy didn’t sell his soul to the devil (or something like that) and write a true american literary masterpiece. If you don’t love this book then you have a heart of stone.
I have waited since 83 for Winter’s Tale to be made into a film. I fear that it will be EXTREMELY difficult to connect the emotional roller coaster ride of the novel to film, but I still can’t wait. For two decades, I have identified people in my life with characters in the novel such as the Right Rev. Mootfowl. Everyone knows a Mootfowl, eh? When I, like so many others, read the book every 2 or 3 years, it is as if I’m reading it for the first time. The author’s mastery of our language is a beautiful thing.and I’ll never forget sleigh rides up the Hudson to a frozen, imaginary world. I am there with Peter, et al, and in the tidal basins of New Jersey, and the rooftops of NY. If you have not read WT, you must. You must before it becomes a film. You’ll be beyond happy that you did.
Its too bad that a film is to be made of Winters Tale. Isn’t the old Hollywood principle – Great Book, Lousy film. Even with all the advances of special effects a film will belittle the book. Just leave it alone, the book plays out in each of our heads in a way that can’t be duplicated.
Like many here, I have loved this book for decades. I doubt any movie, no matter how pedigreed can do it justice but I’m glad to see there is interest.
I am glad to see that I am not the only person who has read WINTER’S TALE numerous times since it was first published almost 30 years ago. I have wished for it to be made into a film just as long, imagining & reimagining the cast with each reading. Now that film technology has reached a point that filming this great book is possible,and I can finally see where it would be feasible to cut out details without ruining the story, I only hope that the cast will do the story justice .