Angelina Jolie is attached to play the Pharaoh, famed for her feminine charms, while filmmakers like James Cameron and Paul Greengrass have subsequently departed the director's chair. The film, based on Stacy Schiff‘s Cleopatra: A Life, was originally drafted by Brian Helgeland but Variety report that Forrest Gump scribe, Eric Roth, has been brought in to perform re-writes.
Fincher is one of the greatest directors working today but I am of the opinion that Benjamin Button was nothing more than an exquisitely polished turd, so of all the writers he has worked with, Roth would be the last name I would suggest. You can imagine this development has done nothing to endear me to a project that I already struggle to care about.
The most famous take on Cleopatra's story was such a lavish disaster that it crippled the Hollywood studio system, ushering in the movie-making outlaws of New Hollywood to produce some of the most radical, uncommercial and influential films ever made.
Without Liz Taylor's gold-encrusted turkey, there would probably be no Bonnie & Clyde, Mean Streets or even Star Wars or Jaws. The face of American cinema may have turned out very different.
I cannot imagine that happening again but a guy can certainly hope.
