It’s commonly known that Valkyrie director Bryan Singer had wanted to direct the long-in-development Harvey Milk biopic called The Mayor of Castro Street for producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, based on a revised script by Chris McQuarrie. But as Variety‘s Anne Thompson reported two or three weeks ago, that project has been abandoned. Zadan and/or Meron confirmed this during a producer’s panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, Thompson has told me.
Now comes an item in the Portland-area publication Willamette Week that Gus Van Sant, director of as currently-rolling Harvey Milk biopic called Milk, has “extended an ‘olive branch’ to Singer by enticing him to make a cameo appearance in the film, which has Sean Penn in the title role. When asked to confirm, Van Sant said he had his fingers crossed that Singer will join his cast. ‘We hope so,’ Van Sant told WW in between takes on the San Francisco set. ‘He said that he will, but scheduling is hard.’