Early last evening Harvey Weinstein & Co. hosted a Majestic Hotel preview of the Weinstein Co.’s 2014 and ’15 slate. St. Vincent costar Naomi Watts and Woman in Gold star Ryan Reynolds said a few words before the product reel was shown. The films included Tim Burton‘s Big Eyes (which looks really good), Suite Francaise, The Giver, Macbeth, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (which screens twice on Saturday), Begin Again and the afore-mentioned St. Vincent (a relationship comedy with Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts and Chris O’Dowd, formerly titled St. Vincent de Van Nuys). Also previewed were The Imitation Game, a cuddly CG bear comedy called Paddington and a forthcoming Antoine Fuqua-directs-Jake Gyllenhaal boxing movie called Southpaw.
I was struck by the absence of any florid Shakespearean verse in the footage for the Michael Fassbender-and-Marion Cotillard Macbeth (due in ’15) so I asked Harvey if the film contains any of that. “It’s cut down,” Harvey said. “[The film is] very conducive to mainstream audiences.” So this new Macbeth doesn’t resemble the 1971 Polanski version? “No, no…it’s somewhere in the middle but it’s very understandable,” Harvey replied. So instead of Fassbender saying “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” he’ll just say “tomorrow”? Here’s the mp3 of our brief discussion.