Some interesting movie news you may have missed yesterday courtesy of Deadline, who reported that the production companies Annapurna and Plan B, will team up for a Spotlight-esque film about the work that went into breaking the Harvey Weinstein rape/harassment/being-an-all-around-scumbag scandal that has shaken Hollywood.
This is pretty big and exciting news for several reasons. Annapurna and Plan B both have pretty rock solid track records with their films, often working with filmmakers with distinctive voices and giving them the resources to fulfill their vision. Obviously, this is still in the early stages of development, so no word on the creatives that will be involved, but we do have a minor tidbit giving us a glimpse at the kind of story we should expect. Here’s what the article stated:
The thrust of the film isn’t Weinstein or his scandal. This is about an all-women team of journalists who persevered through threats of litigation and intimidation, to break a game-changing story, told in a procedural manner like Spotlight and All the President’s Men.
Nothing surprising here, with films like Spotlight – and more recently, The Post – there’s a hunger for films that talk about the work that journalists do, especially at times like this. Plus, emphasizing the role female journalists will bring in a more fresh perspective to this genre since this film will focus heavily on Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor (left and right on the image above, respectively), the now Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporters who worked with editor, Rebecca Corbett, on bringing the Weinstein scandal to the public in a big way. Though, I’m sure Ronan Farrow will play, at the very least, a minor role in this story since he also contributed to breaking the scandal through The New Yorker, and was also a recipient of the Pulitzer along with Kantor and Twohey.
It was inevitable we’d get a movie, or a miniseries about this, but I didn’t think we’d get an announcement so soon. I would prefer some time to pass, so that we can at least see what some of the long term effects of the scandal, the #MeToo movement, and the Time’s Up initiative before we start telling the story about it. It really cannot be understated just how seismic of a event this was. This is the kind of stuff that will (or at least, should) change an industry forever, so if it’s going to get the dramatic treatment, it really needs to be done right. But – like I said – it’s still in early stages, we probably won’t hear about this particular project again for a while, that’s just how this stuff usually works. However, I eagerly await to see what comes of this, and hopefully Hollywood will be in a slightly better place by the time this movie comes out, so it can feel like staring into a relic of the past.
Oh, and one last thing. Since they went out of their way to compare this project to Spotlight, does that means it’s going to end with a list of every single celebrity who has been exposed since this scandal broke out? I’d be shocked if they didn’t.