Steven Spielberg withdraws from Harvey remake

Posted on December 7, 2009
Filed Under Actors, Directors, Remake

I read about this last week but I wasn’t sure we had the full story but it turns out we did. Anyway, Steven Spielberg has apparently withdrawn from the “Harvey” remake. Variety reports that he spent the past half year developing the picture. Spielberg delivered the news this week to 20th Century Fox, which had earmarked sound stages on the lot for an early 2010 production start.

The film is an adaptation of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a man who befriends a six and a half foot tall invisible rabbit. Cool huh? The project has been a challenge to pull together since Spielberg committed to it last August. One of the biggest challenges has been setting a star to play Elwood P. Dowd, the character played by James Stewart in the 1950 film.

Spielberg’s first choice was Tom Hanks, but the actor who is often regarded as a modern day Stewart wanted no part of taking over a role played by the iconic star. Spielberg and Fox spent several months courting Robert Downey Jr. While the star didn’t commit, he made suggestions on rewrites of the Jonathan Tropper script. He and Spielberg never found themselves in creative sync on the script, and the director finally called the whole thing off. (Guys, can’t we all just get along?) Fox 2000 will continue working on “Harvey” and could re-approach Spielberg and Downey.

It wasn’t immediately clear which picture Spielberg will direct instead. I’m thinking “Indiana Jones V”… He completed production last March on “The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn,” and though he has been preoccupied godfathering projects like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” Spielberg is certainly itching to direct a film again. I’m guessing Spielberg will be reading a lot of scripts over the holidays…

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