Jennifer Lawrence and David O.Russell have formed a kind of Leonardo DiCaprio-Martin Scorsese alliance. Or the beginnings of one. What would you call Lawrence starring in Silver Linings Playbook plus costarring in Russell’s untitled Abscam movie plus (according to Deadline‘s Mike Fleming) just signing to star in Russell’s The Ends Of The Earth, an early-to-mid 20th Century Midwestern romance, based on a true story.
The kicker is that Earth is about a father-and-adopted-daughter relationship that graduates, almost Woody Allen-style, into a marriage.
Ernest Whitworth (or E.W.) Marland (1874-1941) was an Oklahoma-based oil tycoon and politician. In 1916 he and his wife Virginia, who were childless, adopted Virginia’s nephew and niece, 19 year-old George and 16 year-old Lydie. Virginia died in 1926. Two years later Marland had Lydie’s adoption annulled, and then he married her. She was 28 and he was 54. He lost much of his fortune in the late ’20s but they stayed together until E.W.’s death on 10.3.41, at the age of 67. Lydie lived a spotty and itinerant life after that. She died at age 87.
Who’s going to play Marland? Tom Cruise? Naah, too short.
The script for the Weinstein Co. project has been written by Argo‘s Chris Terrio. The producers are Todd Black, Steve Tisch and Jason Blumenthal of Escape Artists.
This seems like a weird project for Russell, which feels like something Terrence Malick might have directed in the ’70s. Russell is more of a present-tense type of guy. It sounds like a little bit of Giant or Days of Heaven mixed in with an inappropriate, vaguely scandalous father-daughter attraction, not exactly incestuous but close enough. I wonder what Russell sees in this. Honestly? It doesn’t sound all that commercial. It sounds vaguely icky.
