Note:
Characters, reviews, and downloads links are not yet
available.
Production status:
MINORITY
REPORT: Pre-PRODUCTION NEWS!
"In the future, time manipulation
technology allows cops to arrest people for crimes they have
yet to commit. But when one of the cops finds himself accused,
he must race to clear his own name....if he can."
Welcome to the newly launched MINORITY
REPORT fansite! (for late breaking news, please scroll down)
If
you don't already know, 20th Century Fox has secretly been
working on their version of The Phantom Menace, entitled,
MINORITY REPORT, a futuristic action thriller directed by
"wunderkind" Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise. Also
most likely making appearances are Jenna Elfman, Matt Damon, and Ian
McKellan, this years favorite old man who is also slated for X-MEN and
LORD
OF THE RINGS.
Not much is known about MINORITY
REPORT yet. What we DO know is the following:
The
Stars:
Tom Cruise
Matt Damon*
Cate
Blanchett
Ian McKellan*
Jenna Elfman* |
The
Crew:
Steven Spielberg(who?
:0P)
Ron Shusett, Scott
Frank(screenwriters)
Jan De Bont(producer)
John Williams(composer) |
Distributors:
DreamWorks and 20th
Century Fox
release date: November
17, 2000
Production start: February,
2000 |
*=either
unconfirmed or in talks
Latest
News:
SPIELBERG INTERVIEWED ON ENTERTAINMENT
TONIGHT AND JUST MAKES MY LIFE WORSE.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 22, 1999
Nick
For some strange reason, I no longer
get the ET show in Brownsville, Tx, the nation's poorest city,
then again, that may be why. Having thrown my remote control
at the TV after the message "We are sorry, Entertainment
Tonight will no longer be shown on this channel. From now on,
'How to cook roasted corn and make a feast! with Rodolpho
Quintallina will be shown!' appeared on the screen, I decided
to just get back to writing my screenplay (yes, everyone and
their mother is writing one too) that I started a few days
ago. Like most people, we write ALOT on the computer, from
scripts and fan fiction to plans and strategies on where to
place a pipe bomb during the millennium. Anyways, a friend
sent in the link
to the Spielberg interview that was transcripted from
television broadcast to web form. The interview, and once
again, mainly just talks about his childhood and what movie
has affected him the most. But, at the end they do mention
some things about Minority Report in which Spielberg says,
"Oh yea, [Minority Report] it may very well be next.
Everything is developing."
It appears that Spielberg is
still waiting for the PERFECT project. With the Harry Potter
book series holding the #1 spot on the bestseller's list
hostage with no Rainbox Six team in sight, and with two
scripts apparently adapted from the books, Spielberg has shown
strong interest in helming the director's role on this book
adaptation. I am currently reading the first Harry Potter book
just to see what the big deal is, and for your information,
the book is extremely fluid and silky when it comes to how the
words are put together. More on that later. But with the
Potter adaptation not really an ideal film to create for the
millennium, Minority Report has his vote...so far. Oh hey, I
found an interesting thing on the web the other day: What does
"Astronomer" spell when you take those letters and
mix them up to form a phrase?
"Moon starer"
How about "Princess Diana" -- "End is a car
spin"
And the most intriguing part, "Year two thousand"--
"A year to shut down."
Cheers.
Stay tuned for the next update as it happens.
CRUISE
CONFIRMS ON ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT THAT HIS NEXT PROJECT IS
MINORITY REPORT!
FRIDAY DECEMBER 10, 1999 Nick
A few of you have sent in
emails telling me that Tom Cruise was
interviewed on Entertainment Tonight last night and
confirmed that his next project was in fact, Minority
Report. This is great!
Two official confirmations
from the two strongest players involved with Minority
Report – Spielberg a day ago on Larry King Live, and Cruise,
last night, on ET. I am still a little
angry though for all the false speculation they caused the
last few months, but in the end, this may be the best Sci-Fi
film in 10 years, if not, of all time.
On
a side note, many internet sites are reporting that Spielberg
might shoot Kubrick’s A.I. BEFORE he does Minority
Report. I believe this is false. Spielberg personally said
on the ‘King interview that he is still up for it, but,
“that is something I’ll do later. Not now.”
Stay tuned to the site for more news as it happens as we get
closer to the official production date of February 14, 2000.
SPIELBERG RE-CONFIRMS HIS INTEREST IN
MINORITY REPORT ON LARRY KING LIVE AND IS SLATED FOR A
THANKSGIVING 2000 RELEASE!
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 8, 1999 Nick
For those who missed it, Steven
Spielberg made a surprise guest appearance on CNN's, Larry
King Live last night. It was a great interview and the
audience was able to get some inside information about
Spielberg's kids, his lifestyle, and how he came up with the
name 'Dreamworks'. Perhaps most importantly, we were able to
get official word from Spielberg that the first project he is
doing is MR and that work has already began. Interestingly, he
also said that he will be doing Memoirs of a Geisha right
after it, back to back. What about Indy4? Well, he said he is
very interested in it and is willing to do it if he and
Harrison Ford "aren't too old." Steven Spielberg is
52.
More
information on what's going on with the scribes involved with
MR
MONDAY NOVEMBER 15,
1999
Well,
the news is starting to pour in. For those who are still
clueless as to why MR keeps being pushed back, here are a few
explanations. First of all, the actors/actresses involved with
the MR are still wrapping up their current film productions.
Tom Cruise is supposed to finish his Mission Impossible 2 role
sometime this month along with Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett
on their respective roles elsewhere. NOTE: Part of the reason
why Matt Damon and Jenna Elfman have yet to agree to MR is
because they have yet to see a finalized script. Tom Cruise is
in it because of Spielberg, someone he's never worked with
before. I hope that cleared some confusion as to why people
haven't been officially signed to the pic and as to why MR
keeps getting pushed back.
The following is a note sent in from a fellow reader of the
site who claims to have some news on the screenwriters who are
invovled with the pic. Check it out.
---------------------------
I
read with concern your recent posting about Jon Cohen's
involvement with the ‘’Minority Report’’production.
Knowing several of the senior agents at the William Morris
Agency, I was given the opportunity to look over the
contracts and it is obvious who is and is not responsible for
the scripting of
“Minority Report.” Ron Shusett and Gary
Goldman (“Total Recall”) optioned a second Philip
K. Dick short story “The Minority Report”
and set up a deal to write the screenplay (the first draft)
five years ago at fox. Jon Cohen was hired to do a rewrite of
the Shusett/Goldman draft by Director Jan De Bont (“The
Haunting”) who has a deal at Fox. Upon reading it,
Spielberg was not pleased and did not hold any meeting with
Cohen. Already having a relationship with Scott Frank (“Saving
Private Ryan”), Spielberg asked him to do another draft.
It was after this that Spielberg learned that Shusett/Goldman
penned the first draft. Then after reading the first draft, he
wanted to keep the original premise, but because he had a
contract with Frank, Spielberg opted to give him the
opportunity to deliver his take on it. Frank is working on his
second draft of the screenplay and is about to turn it in. I
just want to make it clear that at no time did Spielberg ever
consider working from Jon Cohen's draft of “Minority
Report.”
Former
nurse inspired idea for Minority Report
SUNDAY
NOVEMBER 13,1999 Lubbock
Online
Hey
folks, I was surfing the web looking for additional articles
to add to this site when I came upon this one. It's an
interesting read and also sheds some light on one of the
screenwriters involved in this project.
-----------------------------
In Hollywood, it's already being touted as the movie event of the summer of 2000: Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, the superstar actor and superstar director, teamed in a futuristic thriller crawling with sexy precognitive mutants and killers hunted down for murders they've yet to commit.
It's called "Minority Report," it's based on a Philip K. Dick short story (so were a couple of none-too-shabby flicks titled "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall"), and you can thank a former intensive-care nurse from Swarthmore, Pa., for the whole darn thing.
Jon Cohen, 44, a borderline agoraphobic (well, not really, but he freely admits to homebody-ism) who segued from nursing to novel-writing to screenplays, sat there in his office in the modest Victorian he shares with his wife and two kids in the Philadelphia suburb, and dreamed up the whole thing.
"I'd never written sci-fi before," Cohen confesses. "I don't have any special affinity for it, I don't read it, I don't know a lot about it, so therefore I brought a naivete and innocence to the whole thing. Translation: I didn't know what the heck I was doing."
But something about the script, which was originally housed at "Twister" auteur Jan De Bont's production company, clicked with Messrs. Cruise and Spielberg. Spielberg, in fact, jettisoned his planned "Saving Private Ryan" follow-up, "Memoirs of a Geisha," to take on "Minority Report." (Spielberg says he'll get to "Geisha" later.) "Minority" is a DreamWorks/20th Century Fox coproduction that should start shooting in the fall and be in theaters the next summer.
Cohen says that rather than going for the usual sci-fi stuff ("You can't get into spaceships, because that's 'Star Wars' terrain, there's nothing to do there"), he went the other way. Like backward.
"I made it a sort of neo-'50s world, not like 'Back to the Future,' not jokey or anything like that, but based around the repressive but sunny themes of the 1950s," Cohen says of his murder mystery.
"It's also, of course, a kick to think that something I created on my computer up in my room now has this huge sort of effect where hundreds of millions of dollars will change hands as a result of it, carpenters will be hired, musicians will be hired, CGI teams will be hired. And then people will go to the movie, and guys will be yelling at their dates because their dates would rather see a romantic comedy."
Cohen, who turned to writing full time in 1990, has a half-dozen screenplays kicking around various studios and
production companies, but, like a lot of well-paid Tinseltown typists, he has never actually had one made. The projects range from time-travel detective stories (including one, called "Old City," that toggles back to colonial Philadelphia) to a pirate movie to an adaptation of Cohen's second novel, a fantasy called "The Man in the Window." Last month, Cohen trekked to New York to lunch with Nicole Kidman to discuss the script he's writing for her, a science-gone-wrong tale based on "The Adaptive Ultimate." a short story by '30s pulp scribe Stanley G. Weinbaum (nom de plume: John Jessel).
"It was a good meeting. She was thrilled with my take on it," he says, theorizing that Kidman got Cohen's name from her husband, that Cruise guy.
"I'm sort of the court screenwriter," he jokes. "I imagine - I'm just conjecturing here - that at some point he flipped that "Minority Report" screenplay across the bed to his wife, she read it, and my name ended up on a list of potential writers for this other project.'
Cohen, an avid follower of Hollywood gossip and rumor-mongering, also makes occasional forays to the Coast. In December, just after DreamWorks and Fox announced the "Minority Report" project, the mild-mannered fellow from "woodsy Swarthmore" headed west to take a meeting with Spielberg.
"It lasted a couple of hours," Cohen reports. "He said, `I'm putting on my filmmaker's cap now ... and I just want to ask you questions about directions you took and just generally go through the script and see what it's all about. ..."
"It was just me and him and the president of Fox sitting there doing the thing. What occurs next I do not know. It's a massive enterprise. What sort of roller-coaster ride, who will be on, who will be off, who will be in, who will be out, I can't anticipate. My job is to continue apace and do other projects and move forward."'
Or backward, or whatever time and place Cohen imagines he needs to go.
SET CONSTRUCTION FOR
MINORITY REPORT HAS BEEN ON AT THE MANHATTAN BEACH STUDIOS
SATURDAY NOVEMBER
13, 1999 Coming
Attractions
I
just got word that Minority Report has been in the set
construction stages for a while! The following description
doesn't tell much, but at least we are given further
confidence that MR will be happening. Read on!
"Set
contruction for Minority Report is going on at the
Manhattan Beach Studios (where Ally McBeal and The Practice
are filmed). My fat plummer brother is working on the
soundstage...not on set construction, but putting in a sink
inside the soundstage...not for the film, but for the actual
soundstage itself. He's seen Spielberg there every day
working. Spielberg was, I guess, 'checking out the sets'. My
brother said it looked like 'a huge space ship looking thing.'
If it was a spaceship of not, I don't know. He's dumb."
'LINDBERGH'
IS LATEST IN SPIELBERG'S LIST OF BOOK ADAPTATIONS
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 11 1999 9:31AMCTVariety
Hey all, just wanted to remind
everyone that this site is not dead and to please check back
here every once in a while to find out the latest on what's
going on in the world of Minority Report and Steven Spielberg.
Here is an article taken from the latest Variety publication
in which it talks about Minority Report status and other
projects Spielberg is interested in. Read on:
Bringing
the high-profile project out of the hangar and back onto the
tarmac, DreamWorks and principal Steven Spielberg have tapped
Menno Meyjes to adapt “Lindbergh,” A. Scott Berg’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning bio of Charles A. Lindbergh.
Meyjes,
who scripted “The Color Purple” for Spielberg, will write
the screenplay as a directing outing for the Oscar-winning
helmer.
While it
is still expected that Spielberg will next helm Tom Cruise in
“Minority Report” for Fox/DreamWorks, a greenlight is
pending Scott Frank’s draft of the screenplay, which is due
imminently.
That pic
had been expected to start production in January, but was
delayed due to ironing out the script and waiting for star Tom
Cruise to be free from the marathon shoot of “Mission:
Impossible II.” If all parties accept the script,
“Minority” could go before the cameras in late February or
early March.
Whether
it actually begins shooting early in 2000, Spielberg spokesman
Marvin Levy said, “depends on everything being in place, on
everyone’s schedule being in place. But they’re well down
the line on all of that.”
It’s
understood that Spielberg would then turn to the film version
of “Memoirs of a Geisha” for Columbia before embarking on
“Lindbergh.”
But
again, there is no set date for “Geisha,” which is well
into development and was always viewed as a holiday release.
However, the chances of it being a Christmas 2000 release
appear extremely thin.
Levy
added that no consideration would be given to a start date for
the Lindbergh biopic “until there’s a script that everyone
says, ‘OK, that’s it.’ ”
Nevertheless,
he said, the Lindbergh project “certainly is something
that’s very much in active development, as evidenced by the
fact that they brought in another writer.”
“Steven
has done films back-to-back before. It’s not inconceivable
that he could do it right after ‘Minority.’ ”
Paul
Attanasio signed on to adapt the bio soon after DreamWorks
purchased the rights to Berg’s nearly completed book
sight-unseen. Attanasio later dropped out without penning a
draft.
While
“Lindbergh” had been put on the back burner after
Attanasio’s departure and as Spielberg turned his attention
to other projects, the biopic became an open writing
assignment in the summer, with Meyjes and Spielberg choosing
to reunite earlier this month.
It had
been rumored that Spielberg had cooled on the project after
reading about the famed flier’s anti-Semitism, but last
year, the director told Daily Variety’s Army Archerd that he
would take on Lindbergh, warts and all.
“Once
you commit to do a biography on an icon of a century, you have
to be unflinching, you have to flesh out the entire story —
and from (Lindbergh’s wife) Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s point
of view — and not from Lindbergh the man,” Spielberg said
at the time (Daily Variety, Nov. 11, 1998). He added: “It
will be objective without bias of any kind. I’m not trying
to put him on a pedestal or to tear him down. It’s an honest
story about his life.”
Though
Spielberg directed Meyjes’ adaptation of “Color Purple”
in 1985 (Meyjes also was credited on the Spielberg-helmed
“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in 1989), the helmer
was drawn back to Meyjes after reading his screenplay
“Hoffman,” a study of the relationship between a young
Adolph Hitler and the Jewish art teacher who failed to
encourage the future Nazi leader’s artistic abilities — a
premise that has been adopted as one reason Hitler tu
rned to politics and genocide instead of focusing on art.
Meyjes is
looking to set up “Hoffman,” to which he is attached to
direct. His other credits include Fox’s 1998 release “The
Siege.”
Meyjes’
deal was brokered by ICM’s Ken Kamins and Jeff Gorin
