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Features
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Got Milk?
Producer Craig Zadan confirms that unless the 2009 movie Milk goes away, Steve Carell will not be playing the part of the slain San Francisco Supervisor in their project.
Friday, January 11, 2008 at 5:45 PM
By Ian Spelling
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Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com
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Quickly rising to the top of the Hollywood food chain
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It’s a tantalizing casting possibility: Steve Carell, making that inevitable move from comedy towards serious drama, starring as slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk in The Mayor of Castro Street. With a rock solid script by Christopher McQuarrie for his Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer, everything was moving along nicely on the Craig Zadan-Neil Meron production. That is, until Gus Van Sant and Focus Features waltzed into the picture, seemingly from out of nowhere.
“Bryan was supposed to direct The Mayor of Castro Street immediately following Valkyrie,” Zadan tells FilmStew. “And out of the blue, Gus Van Sant came along with another Harvey Milk script. So although we have been working on this movie for 16 years, where finally we found the moment in time where we got the right script, the right director and even - we haven’t really discussed this – shall we say, interest in the movie from Steve Carell to play Harvey Milk…”
“Once we started thinking about it [the idea of Carell as Milk], we thought, ‘Wow, that’s a great idea,’” he continues. “So we were all primed to make it; Warner Bros. was primed to make it; and, in theory, we would have been going into production right after the writers strike. But now, with the Gus Van Sant movie going ahead [Milk, with Sean Penn in the lead role], nobody wants to have another situation like Capote.”
“They [Van Sant, Focus] haven’t starting shooting yet, so anything can happen. But the handwriting is on the wall that if they go into production and start shooting, we won’t get to make our movie.”
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TheCastro.net
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Harvey Milk (1930-1978)
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For now, Zadan is looking forward to this weekend’s Golden Globes press conference to see how those three Hairspray nominations turn out. The film is up for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical, while John Travolta is nominated as Best Supporting Actor and Nikki Blonsky is gunning for Best Actress.
“If we win some of those Golden Globes, I think it could put Hairspray in a new position in terms of Oscar consideration,” suggests Zadan. “If we don’t win any, I think it sort of makes it questionable.”
“There’s been a lot of talk about Travolta for Best Supporting Actor,” he continues. “All I can say is I really hope that he gets nominated and I think he deserves to be nominated, because it was an audacious and daring choice. He went so far and worked so hard, so I really think it’s one of those amazing moments in his career that I think should be acknowledged. So I’m hoping that he does get an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor.”
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