I have three…uhm, concerns about Mike Fleming‘s Deadline story, posted earlier today, about an intention by producers Beau Flynn and Basil Iwanyk to produce Mayday 109, a retelling of the famous story of Lt. John F. Kennedy‘s World War II adventure when his PT boat was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer and the ordeal that followed. Samuel Franco and Evan Kilgore‘s script reportedly tells the “true” story of what happened. Obviously the casting of the lead role will be crucial. For whatever reason Fleming chooses not to mention PT 109, the stodgy, overlong and obviously sanitized Warner Bros. film about the incident. Released in June 1963, it wasn’t well reviewed (JFK called it a “good product” but worried about the 140-minute length) and it didn’t make much money — basically a tank. Nor does Fleming ask what kind of “true” material the new version will have that will distinguish it from the Cliff Robertson version. And if I was a keeper of the PT 109 flame, I would be seriously worried about any re-telling co-produced by Flynn, whose San Andreas was a ludicrous CG cartoon. Iwanyk, producer of Sicario, reps a more respectable brand. Here’s Paul Mavis’s DVD Talk review of PT 109 is streaming in high-def on Amazon…odd.
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