Oscar-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland has spoken about the ill-fated Sony Pictures project that came to have David Fincher in the spotlight
Since Joseph L. Mankiewicz worked that titanic, multimillion-dollar miracle that almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox—now converted into 20th Century Studios—titled ‘Cleopatra’, Hollywood has actively and passively tried to re-address the exciting life of this historical figure.. Unfortunately, attempts to bring a project focused on it to fruition are counted as failures.
Among them we find the Cleopatra film that Patty Jenkins was developing to star Gal Gadot – with whom she has worked on both ‘Wonder Woman’ -, the production that has been hanging around Denis Villeneuve’s head for a long time and that seems to have been lost. like tears in the rain or the case at handwhich flirted with none other than David Fincher as director.
The other Cleopatra
This takes us back to the early 2010s, when Sony Pictures launched its own Egyptian epic with Angelina Jolie as the lead actress. Now, more than a decade after it fell on deaf ears, its screenwriter Brian Helgeland, Oscar winner for ‘LA Confidential’ and nominated for ‘Mystic River’, has given clues about what we might have expected from what he has described as “a political thriller with murder and sex.”
So has spoken about his ‘Cleopatra’ in an interview with ‘Inverse’.
“I was the first scriptwriter for ‘Cleopatra’ when it was being developed for Angelina Jolie to star in, which almost became a reality. It had elements of a political thriller with murder and sex, but it is an epic that is divided between her romances with Caesar and Marco Antonio. Many real events surprised me when I was writing it.
For example, the day Caesar was assassinated, the Ides of March and all that stuff, she was in Rome. They were leaving for Egypt, and the reason they had to kill him at that moment was because he was leaving the city with her. That is historically true and was presented in the script. She writes Mark Antony’s speech — ‘friends, Romans, compatriots’ — because he doesn’t know what to say, but she tells him what to say. It’s her way of saying ‘fuck you’ to those guys because she’s smart enough and he’s not.”
For her part, Jolie spoke in this way with The Telegraph in 2011 about his perspective on the character and the project.
“She’s been so misunderstood. I thought it was all about glamour, but then I read about her and she was a very strong mother, she spoke five languages and she was a leader. My performance will never be as charming as Elizabeth’s. We’re trying to get into in a different truth about her as a pharaoh and not as a sex symbol, because she really wasn’t. Even this idea that she had many lovers… it was possible that there were only two. It’s very interesting, but she wasn’t a great beauty.” .
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