Heaven Can Wait: Beatty is Back!

UPDATE: JUNE 23 – It’s not Tracy 2 after all!

It seems that the project Beatty plans to stamp as his comeback/finale as actor/director is actually a new biopic on Howard Hughes. Bizarre not only owing to the knowledge that Christopher Nolan (a busy boy at the best of times) is in development on a Hughes project all his own – but also in light of Scorsese’s masterful The Aviator having pretty much told all of it. But, alas no. The real juicy part of Hughes life is where Scorsese’s film ends. Hughes fell deeper into mental illness and wound up living in penthouse suites in hotels the world over, not least of which being Las Vegas where he strived to change the entire city, buying all and sundry including TV stations.

“I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car.” Hughes remarked to one of his many aids.

His addiction to injecting codeine directly into his muscles; encounters with Nixon and the CIA, surrounding himself with Mormons, obscure behavior (and odd obsessions), OCD combined with immense power and wealth are wonderful celluloid fodder – if in the right hands.

Nolan’s take on this finale to Hughes’ life would have to be mind-bending and dark beyond belief (based on Michael Drosnin’s Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness) however Beatty merely recruiting the who’s-who in Hollywood via a Rolodex and a bit of internet surfing reeks of a lesser project with a bigger marketing ploy. Time will tell.

Original Story
After a decade in the wilderness, 74-year-old icon of ‘70s Hollywood (alongside Nicholson, Eastwood and Redford) Warren Beatty, is set to return to the big screen with a project for which he plans to write, direct and star. Not since 1998′s Bulworth has the Oscar-winner helmed a feature (he was last seen in the forgettable 2001 rom-com Town and Country), however signs from Paramount CEO Brad Grey point to a promising comeback.

“Warren’s script is quintessentially Beatty, elegantly written and wonderfully entertaining,” Grey said. “It is our privilege to have one of the great artists in the history of the film industry come home to Paramount.”

Production is due to begin later in the year on the as-yet-untitled project, no word yet on casting either – however in true Beatty style, we could be forgiven for anticipating an ensemble of Dick Tracy proportion.

Speaking of which, Beatty participated in an audience Q&A session for LA’s Hero Complex Festival for over an hour-and-a-half last week after an encore screening of the 1990 comic-book extravaganza. Showcasing his loving homage to lush pulp colours and incorporating the trademark prosthetic-faced gangsters some 15 years before Rodrigeuz/Miller’s Sin City; when asked of the possibility of a sequel, Beatty simply replied, “I’ll do another one”.

Tracy, regardless of its obvious floors, was a milestone in film-making that put the star back on the star map after the disastrous reception and politics behind the infamous Ishtar. Now, 21 years later, could this be the long awaited and much discussed sequel he’s been fighting to preserve? Beatty recently settled a lawsuit with The Tribune Company over the rights to Dick Tracy. Given motion picture and television control over the character for 26 years (under the stipulation that he would continue to develop projects involving the square-jawed detective), Tribune Co. sited an inactivity on Beatty’s behalf as their grounds to proceed against him – a contest they lost recently in March.

Now with Dick Tracy firmly back in his hands, a promise of a sequel, and the today’s news of Paramount’s green light – should we join the dots?
Stay tuned.