They have no actors, screenwriter, or director attached, but a group of producers has already figured out the budget for their planned remake of a 1973 prison drama: $90 million. The original film, Papillon, starred Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman as criminals trying to escape from Devil's Island, a French penal colony located in South America.
According to Variety, Spanish production company Atlantia Canarias recently closed a deal for the rights to the autobiography of Henri Charriere, whose best-selling book served as the basis for Papillon. The company has teamed up with veteran Los Angeles-based producers Branko Lustig (Gladiator, American Gangster) and John J. Kelly (Into the Wild, The Black Dahlia). Most of the financing has already been arranged through a Canary Islands tax investment vehicle, whereby taxpayers "earmark part of their payments for film and TV investment."
It's been several years since I've seen Papillon, but it felt very low-key and, frankly, drab and unexciting. Writing in 1973, Roger Ebert wasn't very impressed: "You know something has gone wrong when you want the hero to escape simply so that the movie can be over." The original film had an estimated budget of $12 million. Considering the remake's budget, I imagine the producers have set aside a good portion of that for two big male stars, and probably a star director.
Does this remake stir any interest? Who could put on the prison clothes worn by Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman?
1. The origional Papillon's beauty is in its subtlety. Its "classicness" is personified by its tense as iron performance by Hoffman. There was only one real Papillon (Henrie Charriere), and there is only one real cinematic Papillon (Steve McQueen). This was a classic role for McQueen. It is a tall order to suggest that a classic McQueen film can be comparably remade by those first approaching it as a business venture, and not by a writer or director approaching it with a vision (i.e., including more of the book or some of the sequal, which is highly superfluous). With all due respect to Mr. Ebert, there is a sublime quality to the origional film, and it likely will be lost. How could it not, the way it is coming into being? P.H. Hoffman should stick to films like "The Savages," subtle because of the combination of story and acting, even more than neo-new wave (we get it already) camera work or other artsy devices. We can massage each other over the discussion of whether Downey Jr. is ironically suited to play this role, because in spite of his brat pack background he has earned some real wrinkles, and he is interesting, but this is not the project to put the bones behind this new skin. He will surely have his first Papillon, but this Papillon won't be it.
Posted at 3:09AM on Jul 31st 2008 by eric blazsek