Here's Murtada telling the tale of Jane.
Say you are Natalie Portman. You just won an Oscar then took some time off to raise your young family. You are ready to come back to work. You decide to take charge of your career and produce a movie. You find a hot script by a young talented writer. It’s a revisionist western, a genre you haven’t tried before. You choose to work with an acclaimed female director because you want to tell more stories about women and employ more women. To co-star you choose one of the most respected actors of your generation. Great intentions all around. Then everything falls apart just as filming is supposed to start.
That’s the saga of Jane Got a Gun. On the first day of shooting director Lynne Ramsay left. Despite a now settled lawsuit no one knows why but differences with producers and financiers are suspected. The leading man, Michael Fassbender, leaves too as Ramsay was the main reason he signed on. He’s replaced by Bradley Cooper. Then Jude Law. Then Joel Edgerton who was supposed to play the “baddie” is promoted to the lead. Ewan McGregor is hired for Edgerton’s part. Producers scramble to find a director while the cast and crew are waiting on set in New Mexico. Finally Gavin O’Connor (Warriors) is hired. He brings with him his writer (Anthony Tambakis ) and they do a major re-write alienating the original writer (Brian Duffield). Somehow everyone gets to work, the movie is shot while PR experts are in damage control mode.
Months later the movie is set for release for February 2015. Then it’s delayed to September 2015. And a month before release the studio behind Jane goes bankrupt. The film is one of many caught in the crosshairs of Relativity’s recent Chapter 11 filing. Others include the Nicholas Hoult- Felicity Jones starrer Collide and Jim Sheridan’s The Secret Scripture with Rooney Mara and Vanessa Redgrave.
But it looks like there’s a happy ending for Jane after all. The Weinstein Company has picked it up for distribution and will release in Europe this November and in the US next February.
And it’s also nice to see Natalie Portman continue creating opportunities for women behind the camera. She directed her first movie A Tale of Love and Darkness based on Amos Oz's autobiographical book. The movie played Cannes and Toronto to mixed reviews. One of her upcoming projects is On the Basis of Sex, a biography of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be directed by Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl).
Are you glad to finally see Jane get a break?