UPDATE: The LA Times movie blog has more about Cohen’s plans and the movie here.
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ORIGINAL POST:
Wow, some ambitious plans coming from CJ E&M Pictures (until recently CJ Entertainment) — they have tapped Rob Cohen, director of FAST AND THE FURIOUS, to helm a 1950, a $100-million movie about the Korean War. That’s rather impressive.
Most importantly, the story looks pretty interesting, too, based on the life of the famous New York Herald Tribune journalist Marguerite Higgins. After reporting on WWII, Higgins was sent to Tokyo in the late 1940s. So when the Korean War started, she flew over right away to cover the fall of Seoul. Soon after that, the Tribune’s star war reporter (Homer Bigart) arrived to cover the war and tried to send Higgins back to Japan, but she refused to go, and the two competed for stories. Then McArthur tried to ban women from reporting on the front lines, but she changed his mind. She would write WAR IN KOREA in 1951 and won a Pulitzer Prize.
Higgins died in 1966 when she was just 45 years old, covering the war in Vietnam.
The Film Biz Asia story says they are looking for a big Hollywood name to play Higgins and the marine platoon leader, and a major Korean actor will play a KATUSA (Korean soldier assigned to the US Army).
The film will end with the famous Christmas Eve evacuation of 100,000 Korean civilians from the Port of Hungnam in northern Korea, as North Korean and Chinese troops were moving in. This is quite an interesting place to end, as for years Cineclick Asia was trying to make a $20-million movie about that battle, called CHRISTMAS CARGO. At one point they had Terence Chang on board to produce and Bruce Beresford to direct, but I guess that project fell apart (as so many do).
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