Channing Tatum’s Next Ride Will Be Evel Knievel Biopic

July 12, 2012

By Tom Blunt

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Channing Tatum/Photo © S Bukley/Shutterstock; Evil Knievel via USA.gov

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Now that everyone’s familiar with Channing Tatum’s high velocity moves, the actor’s going to have to up the stakes. Hence his new Evel Knievel project, based on a book about the famous motorcycle stuntman by Stuart Barker, which will get everyone’s motors revving (in a much more literal way, sadly) sometime next year.

I’ve got a bone to pick with the proposed remake of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.” Do you really expect lightning to strike twice? The success of the original was entirely owing to stars Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. We learned this the hard way via the abysmal TV version that the Redgrave sisters starred in back in 1991. In other words, you’d better have some pretty bold ideas or some knockout leads, or don’t even step up to the plate!

Following last week’s article in the Times about all the endings Hemingway wrote for A Farewell to Arms, the estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald released forty-seven alternate endings to The Great Gatsby. Hm, I guess no matter what we think of Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation this Christmas, we can cut him a little slack on the final ten minutes.

Interesting sign of the times when even acclaimed filmmakers like Charlie Kaufman (“Synecdoche, New York”) are campaigning on Kickstarter to get their films made. Kaufman’s “Anomalisa” is a stop-motion animation film about (according to the AVClub) “a motivational speaker who slowly loses his own motivation.” The rewards you can get for donating are pretty intriguing: If you’ve got $5000 to spare,  screenwriter Dan Harmon will write a twenty-minute screenplay about you. (Which probably won’t get produced without its own Kickstarter campaign, and down the rabbit hole we go.)

Tags: A Farewell to Arms, Anomalisa, Baz Luhrmann, Bette Davis, Channing Tatum, Charlie Kaufman, Dan Harmon, Ernest Hemingway, Evel Knievel, Joan Crawford, New York, Stuart Barker, Synechdoche, The Great Gatsby, Vanessa Redgrave, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?