Worldview To Fund David Gordon Green-Helmed ‘Manglehorn’; Al Pacino In Crosshairs?
EXCLUSIVE: Worldview Entertainment has committed to finance and produce Manglehorn, which David Gordon Green will direct from a script he wrote with Paul Logan. I hear they are going out to Al Pacino for the lead role of A.J. Manglehorn, an aging, ordinary guy in a small town who nurses his sick cat, squeezes out a conversation with the local bank teller every Friday, and eats at the same place every day. But there is more to Manglehorn than meets the eye: he’s an ex-con who, 40 years ago, gave up the woman of his dreams for a big “job”. He now obsesses daily over the choices he made. After a dramatic effort to start over, Manglehorn faces a terrifying moment and is unmasked as a guy with a very, very dark past.
This figures to be a hot sales title at Cannes, and in a pitch to potential buyers, Green describes Manglehorn “as the story of a guy who gave up the love of his life for a life of crime and now he regrets it as the world crumbles in front of him. His profession as a locksmith is symbolic of a guy who’s trying to find the key to put his life back together. It’s a love story, the choices you make in your youth and the situations you set up for yourself: you end up sitting alone at the dinner table talking to a cat! I do think there is a beautiful humor in this.”
The film marks Worldview’s second collaboration with Green and his production team after the Nicolas Cage-starrer Joe, which will make the fall film festival circuit. London-based WestEnd Films will handle international sales at Cannes. Worldview CEO Christopher Woodrow and COO Molly Conners will produce alongside Lisa Muskat and Green. Maria Cestone, Sarah Johnson Redlich and Hoyt David Morgan will executive produce alongside Todd Labarowski, Brad Coolidge and Melissa Coolidge for Dreambridge Films, which is making an investment in the film. Jody Hill and Danny McBride will executive produce for Rough House.
CAA reps Green and brokered the deal for Worldview. The agency will rep domestic rights. Green most recently helmed Prince Avalanche, which premiered at Sundance and will be released August 9.
Worldview, which has the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed Birdman and the Daniel Espinosa-directed Child 44 on its slate, will premiere at Cannes the James Gray-directed The Immigrant with Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner, which is screening in competition and will be released by The Weinstein Company; and the Guillaume Canet-directed Blood Ties with Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana and James Caan.
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