Is Spielberg's 'Lincoln' Lost in DreamWorks/Paramount Limbo?

Can't we all just get along?

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Tuesday, February 17th 2009 at 5:25 PM

Kim Masters at Slate sheds some more light on the hotly anticipated Steven Spielberg biopic Lincoln, which only eight days ago we were speculating on whether or not we could expect it by this December.

According to Masters "Spielberg's company, DreamWorks, has had to scramble to raise financing, and that's scary enough. But money troubles have also cost Spielberg the right to partner on his passion project–a film about Abraham Lincoln. With Liam Neeson lined up to star, Spielberg would like to finish by the end of 2009, [but] DreamWorks' money troubles have cost him. This past weekend, he'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."

She continues saying, "[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, directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings), and A Thousand Words, a comedy starring Eddie Murphy. And DreamWorks didn't have the money.

"So now Paramount is deciding whether it wants to make Lincoln. The decider is Brad Grey–the man the DreamWorks team treated for a long time as a mortal enemy. Paramount already passed on Lincoln a couple of years ago, citing the size of the budget. Since then, Spielberg has trimmed the cost to about $50 million. Still, this doesn't seem like an easy call: The Lincoln movie–an earnest 19th-century drama–calls to mind one of Spielberg's least commercially successful films, Amistad."

I can't say I particularly agree with Masters saying the Lincoln project recalls Amistad as there seems to be a genuine interest in this film in the movie community and not simply for the fact it is a Spielberg feature, but primarily based on the subject matter. I also don't like the way she tosses in "the man the DreamWorks team treated for a long time as a mortal enemy" when referring to Brad Grey. I can't imagine Grey would be someone to hold a grudge to the extent he would hold up a Spielberg pic if he saw legitimate good business sense in making it.

Interesting enough, while I assumed DreamWorks' new deal with Disney would make it easier for Lincoln to get made that obviously isn't the case as it is a title that remains between Paramount and DreamWorks, which as Masters points out, means if Lincoln does get the greenlight that fancy new deal between Disney and DW won't be getting its first Spielberg-directed movie for a while. Of course if Paramount passes another could step in.

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