Shutter Island to roll in March '08 with Marty/Leo

Shutter Island to roll in March '08 with Marty/Leo
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117974525.html Posted: Mon., Oct. 22, 2007, 7:46pm PT Scorsese, DiCaprio team for 'Island' Paramount, Columbia to co-produce film By MICHAEL FLEMING Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio will reteam early next year on "Shutter Island," a Laeta Kalogridis-scripted adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel. Pic is coming together quickly as a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures, with production starting in March. Paramount will supervise production and distribute domestically while Columbia is looking to distribute internationally. The project will be a co-production between Phoenix Pictures, Scorsese's Sikelia and DiCaprio's Appian Way banners. Mike Medavoy, Arnold Messer, Brad Fischer and Scorsese will produce. Lehane, Kalogridis and Louis Phillips will be exec producers. Drama is set in 1954, with DiCaprio in final talks to play U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island. Scouting will begin shortly on the film, which most likely will shoot in Massachusetts, Connecticut or Nova Scotia. Lehane's novel "Mystic River" was turned into a film by Clint Eastwood, and his "Gone Baby Gone" is the basis for the Ben Affleck-directed drama that opened this past weekend. "Shutter Island" was originally optioned in 2003 by Columbia. The option lapsed and Lehane's Gersh reps resold it to Phoenix Pictures. The producer enlisted Kalogridis, the "Alexander" scribe who also wrote "Battle Angel" and "The Dive" for James Cameron. Phoenix and Kalogridis developed "Shutter Island" for about a year. Scorsese and DiCaprio, who've now worked together on three films, were looking at several projects to do early next year, including an adaptation of "The Wolf of Wall Street." The "Shutter Island" script quickly drew both director and star, and a deal is expected to fall into place quickly. Here's the publisher's synopses: Summer, 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them. But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. And neither is Teddy Daniels. Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe’s radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing. . . . Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there? As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount: How has a barefoot woman escaped the island from a locked room? Who is leaving clues in the form of cryptic codes? Why is there no record of a patient committed there just one year before? What really goes on in Ward C? Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards? The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island.Because someone is trying to drive them insane. . . .

Thank you, arnzilla :) Finally, his next project! And it sounds like a suspense/mystery thriller...? Has anyone read the novel?

This particular synopsis puts a genre-spin on it. Sounds wild. Set in 1954, Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island is like M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. The novel captivates and submerges the reader in a constant and eerie surrealism. The mystery is founded on confusion and vague facts; nothing seems real, or authentic. Nothing makes much sense...until the end. The entire time, Lehane is building toward something explosive and deadly, and the last one hundred pages deliver a climax of mind-rattling intensity. A ferry runs every few days from the shores of Boston to Aschecliffe Hospital located on Shutter Island. The hospital, for the most criminally insane people, can easily care for two hundred people, but there are less than seventy patients on the island when U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule arrived. They have been sent to assist in locating a missing psychotic female patient, Rachel Solando. Apparently, Solando has done the impossible and managed to escape from of a locked cell, slip unseen past a group of orderlies playing cards, and get beyond two other guarded checkpoints. It would be an impossible swim from the island back to land, so Solando must still be somewhere on the island. But where? Perhaps the secret coded message she left behind will be just the clue the marshals need to help solve the unexplainable disappearance. Teddy Daniels jumped at the assignment when it came up. He is concerned about finding the missing patient, but he is also full of ulterior motives. When his wife died in an apartment fire, the fire-starter was sentenced to spend the rest of his life at Aschecliffe. Part of him wants to confront the man responsible for his wife's death. Part of him wants to kill the guy. Daniels has been making waves back home, talking up a storm about the island and its experimental treatment on patients and off-the-wall psychology theories. After all, the island has three wards housed in separate buildings and the island's lighthouse is quarantined off by an electrical fence, and armed guards. Something is taking place in that lighthouse, and it's his job to get to the bottom of things. Perhaps there is sinister plot behind his visit to the isolated hospital. Maybe he didn't choose the assignment; maybe the assignment chose him. When his partner disappears, it confirms that his own life is in jeopardy. The doctors are playing with him, in the same disturbing way in which they play with their patients. He needs to get off the island or risk becoming a patient himself, trapped, drugged and restrained forever. Shutter Island is a wild ride, an impressive mystery, and an intense psychological thriller. Dennis Lehane is a talented writer, one who understands what readers want and expect in a suspense novel, and he gives it to them in overdose quantities. After Hours meets Gothika meets The Da Vinci Code meets The Manchurian Candidate?

After Hours meets Gothika meets The Da Vinci Code meets The Manchurian Candidate? I hope not. Some of the novel covers:

Apparently, Wolfgang Petersen was once going to direct it.

Thank u Arnz for the news. Leo and Marty together again. On a genre that neither of them have touched before. I don`t know what to think really. At least i think it`s gonna be interesting. The Book: Thanks Arnz for the synopsis. I don`t know this book. But i do know Lehane`s Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone. If Shutter Island is as good as these 2, then we can expect something really great. The Screenplay: My fellow compatriot Laeta Kalogridis writes it. I`ve seen 3 things of her work. Birds Of Prey (Bad) Nightwatch (Good) Alexander (Not So Good) Lets hope that this will be her best work. Marty said yes to this. He must know better.

Arnz Thanks for all the great news about DiCaprio and Scorsese' s next project !! I can' wait to 'pull up a chair and begin our ' countdown to "Shutter Island" :) I see they are projecting a March start ...hope that is correct Will Thanks for book covers....might have to see about reading the book :)

EXCITING SCRIPT ! A sort of "roman noir" mixing a lot of themes ! (But no please, no... not a Gothika stuff)...I feel like reading the novel after that synopsis... Arnzi and Will... Thanks a lot for all those first fresh news... I can't wait for a confirmation ! Maybe soon...

THANKS so much Arnzilla for this exciting news. Does that mean we have have lots to post and talk about here again? Hope so. So glad Leo and Marty will be teaming again! :P

Shynney As to "having lots to talk about"...why....I'm already swallowing Energizer batteries, so I'll be more than ready to 'talk and talk' about a new DiCaprio/Scorsese project !!! :roll: Infact I bet ..Arnz is already searching around for the 'ear plugs' he used from the "TD" board :roll: I can't wait !!!

Publisher's review of book ...sounds great From Publishers Weekly Know this: Lehane's new novel, his first since the highly praised and bestselling Mystic River, carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to what has come before, that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written. But as anyone who has read him knows, Lehane, despite his mastery of the mechanics of suspense, is about much more than twists; here, he's in pursuit of the nature of self-knowledge and self-deception, and the ways in which both can be warped by violence and evil. In summer 1954, two U.S. marshals, protagonist Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, arrive on Shutter Island, not far from Boston, to investigate the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando from the prison/hospital for the criminally insane that dominates the island. The marshals' digging gets them nowhere fast as they learn of Rachel's apparently miraculous escape past locked doors and myriad guards, and as they encounter roadblocks and lies strewn across their path-most notably by the hospital's chief physician, the enigmatic J. Cawley-and pick up hints of illegal brain surgery performed at the hospital. Then, as a major hurricane bears down on the island, inciting a riot among the insane and cutting off all access to the mainland, they begin to fear for their lives. All of the characters-particularly Teddy, haunted by the tragic death of his wife-are wonderful creations, but no more wonderful than the spot-on dialogue with which Lehane brings them to life and the marvelous prose that enriches the narrative. There are mysteries within mysteries in this novel, some as obvious as the numerical codes that the missing patient leaves behind and which Teddy, a code breaker in WWII, must solve; some as deep as the most profound fears of the human heart. There is no mystery, however, about how good this book is; like Mystic River, it's a tour de force. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Hmmm, from Eonline: However, DiCaprio's publicist, Ken Sunshine, cautions fans not to get too excited. "Nothing is confirmed, it's all speculation," he tells E! Online. Peanut, thanks for the review :)

Apparently, Wolfgang Petersen was once going to direct it. Peterson speaks about the book in the March 19, 2003 edition of Variety: "I have always loved claustrophobic settings. This island is a spooky location charged with atmosphere and mood"Well, duh. :wink: Meanwhile, Dennis Lehane told the Boston Herald in 2003 that "I loved Das Boot and In the Line of Fire. He's one of those old-time craftsmen types. So when they told me he was interested, I was really happy. We spoke on the phone for about half-an-hour and afterwards I said, 'Let's go with this guy.'" Additionally, IGN.com's Stax wrote that Lehane told the Boston Herald that "British writer Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) has been tapped to pen the screenplay adaptation." Lehane says "there's a lot of buzz" right now on Knight. (Oddly enough, Knight's resume says he was one of the creators of the original British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?) Variety named Knight the winner of its 'Ten Screenwriters to Watch 2002' Award. One issue that Knight will face in scripting Shutter Island, claims Lehane, is that Columbia already wants to muck with his book's ending. The mystery novel, which is set during the 1950s on an island insane asylum, has an ambiguous resolution. Readers are reportedly already coming up to Lehane at book signings wanting to debate it with him. Columbia, says Lehane, would rather that the film adaptation err on the side of clarity. "They'd like something a little less ambiguous," Lehane advised the Herald. "They don't want to leave it open-ended. ... It was my desire that the book have a talked-about ending. But I can understand if the studio wants to make it clear and have some closure."

From a couple of interviews, here's Lehane's take on Shutter Island's inspirations: "I had a desire to do a Gothic, to pay homage to the great pulp films of the '50s. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and movies that indirectly addressed what was going on in the country, when directors and writers couldn't overtly address these problems." "So I said with Shutter Island that I would write a book that was an homage to gothic, but also an homage to B movies and pulp, and that the levels that it worked on would not be readily apparent; the subtext would not be readily apparent. The book works on a straight plane of pure entertainment. If you want to go back and see what other planes it works on, great. If you don't, that's fine. That was the plan. And when I finished it, I thought I'd done it. I had a hybrid of the Bronte sisters and Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers in mind."

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