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Scorsese Ready to Duel
Marty Scorsese's going medieval.
With his good-cop, bad-cop suspense drama The Departed now the biggest box-office hit of his four-decade career, the Oscar-nominated director is ramping up plans to make even more grandiose projects.
Per Variety, Scorsese has snagged the rights to adapt Eric Jager's historical narrative The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal and Trial by Combat in Medieval France to the big screen. The picture is the first to be developed under the new four-year, first-look agreement the filmmaker signed with Paramount Pictures three weeks ago.
Published by Broadway Books in 2004, Jager's opus chronicles the "duel to end all duels," the dramatic true story of the last state-sanctioned fight that occurred in France circa 1386 between Norman knight Jean de Carrouges and a squire, Jacques LeGris, who was accused of brutally raping the knight's beautiful young wife.
Duel will be produced by Misher Films, the Paramount-based company whose other credits include The Rundown (2003) and The Interpreter (2005).
But before Scorsese brings to life the violent rivalries of a bygone era, the helmer first has several other films to complete.
Chief among them is an untitled Rolling Stones concert documentary in the vein of The Last Waltz, which he recently shot in New York City; Paramount plans to distribute the film sometime next year. Another is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, a long-gestating biopic that reunites him with Leonardo DiCaprio—this time playing a youthful, prepresidential Roosevelt as he recast himself from privileged New York politician into the hero who commanded the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Scorsese is also eyeing Science, another historical epic. The story follows the travails of two Jesuit priests in 17th-century feudal Japan who witness the Shogunate's brutal attempt to erase all traces of Western influence from the country. It's based on the book by Shusaku Endo and is being adapted by Jay Cocks, who penned GoodFellas. Scorsese, of course, has a soft spot for period pieces, having helmed Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1989), Goodfellas (1990), The Age of Innocence (1993), Gangs of New York (2002) and The Aviator (2004).
After the success of The Departed, Paramount's new head, Brad Grey, lured the auteur into the studio's fold. Under the terms of the deal, Scorsese gets $2.5 million annually to develop feature films like The Last Duel as potential directing vehicles, as well as television, direct-to-DVD and digital content. As part of the deal, Paramount gets first crack on cofinancing and coproducing any project Scorsese sets up at a rival studio.
Meanwhile, The Departed continues to whack the competition at the box office. Since its Oct. 6 opening, the police thriller, starring DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin, has grossed $113 million domestically and is considered to be an early Oscar favorite.
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