Spielberg's "Lincoln" May Never Happen

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Good news?

Spielberg on Lincoln's ticket
Tony Kushner revising DreamWorks script

Steven Spielberg has made it very clear -- he's not giving up on Lincoln.

For several years, Spielberg has been trying to launch his Lincoln opus, but his project was postponed recently by budget and location problems.

Now, Robert Redford has moved into the picture, announcing his own Lincoln project, "The Conspirator," which will start shooting next month with independent financing and a cast headed by James McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn (Daily Variety, Sept. 14).

Spielberg tells me, "We are very happy that Redford will be doing this Lincoln movie. It is completely different from what our DreamWorks Lincoln movie will be, and we believe that it will add to the commercial potential of our film. Lincoln as a subject is inexhaustible."

Spielberg is presently focusing on his "reimagining" of "Harvey," with Robert Downey Jr. possibly playing the man who sees an invisible rabbit.

Meanwhile, Redford's film will mark his first directing gig since the disastrous "Lions for Lambs," which helped sink United Artists' comeback in 2007. The project will mark Redford's return to a political topic -- this one's historical, to be sure.

Redford's movie focuses on a young woman charged with conspiring to kill Lincoln. It's being funded by a company headed by Joe Ricketts, who professes to be a history buff.

Spielberg's Lincoln yarn reportedly was to focus on the president's anguish over the length and toll of the Civil War. The script is being revised by Tony Kushner.

While Spielberg's project will be a DreamWorks production, Redford, long a champion of indie filmmaking, seems bent on remaining outside the studio system. United Artists, which distributed his last film, has gone silent lately.

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Thanks to several interviews with Liam Neeson and playwright Tony Kushner, we know that the Steven Spielberg-directed "Lincoln" is moving forward, with a goal of going into production soon and releasing the film in theaters at the end of this year.

Since Spielberg and DreamWorks have left Paramount and joined Disney, "Lincoln" would end up a Disney project. Jim Hill Media is even reporting that Walt Disney World might revamp its "Hall of Presidents" attraction to feature the voice of Nesson as Lincoln.

But according to The Big Money, "Lincoln" is still at Paramount not Disney. "This past weekend, (Spielberg's) been waiting for executives at Paramount — the studio he ditched last year — to decide whether to make the film and hire him to direct it," the site reports. "DreamWorks intended to write another big check to retain the right to partner on and produce a separate batch of projects that it had to leave behind at Paramount. In that latter batch was Lincoln. But to stay in the game on Lincoln and the other projects, DreamWorks had to buy two completed films that it made during its time at Paramount (The Lovely Bones and A Thousand Words). And DreamWorks didn't have the money. So now Paramount is deciding whether it wants to make Lincoln."

The site claims Spielberg has shaved the budget on "Lincoln" down to $50 million, but Paramount are still unsure whether they want to proceed with the film because they feel the project is too much in the vein of Spielberg's commercially disappointing historical drama "Amistad."