Per usual, let me get the disclaimer out of the way, this film is not a remake of the 1995 Cindy Crawford/William Baldwin epic of the same name. Sad, I know. We all have fond no memories of that film, and we’ll continue to do so after this project instantly overtakes it as the most popular film to be slapped with the Fair Game moniker.
Watts, of course, was just announced yesterday to be in the new Woody Allen film, and I mentioned her 21 Grams role with Sean Penn. Here he is, fresh off his Oscar-winning turn in Milk, in talks to play the lead opposite Watts.
Watts is set to play Valerie Plame Wilson, an ousted CIA agent, while Penn is in talks to play her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
“Variety” describes the project as follows: “Wilson watched his wife’s CIA status become compromised after he wrote op-ed columns that accused the Bush Administration of manipulating intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Plame Wilson left the CIA in 2005 and she and her husband filed a civil suit against Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Cheney’s ex-chief of staff, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. While Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage admitted they leaked her agency status to journalists, Libby was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury about his role in compromising her covert status.
Then-President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month sentence in 2007, but stopped short of granting him a full pardon, despite aggressive lobbying by Cheney before Bush left the White House in January.”
Doug Liman (Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Jumper) is set to direct. With Liman at the helm, the film would definitely appear to have more of a frenetic pace to it. I’m picturing a The Insider kind of vibe.
I was VERY tempted to post a clip of one of my favorite movies ever, Swingers, due to the Liman connection, but I’ll save that for another time. This would actually be the third collaboration between Watts and Penn after having been in the aforementioned 21 Grams and The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Let’s re-live those past team-ups together through the magic of their trailers:
I’ve never seen The Assassination of Richard Nixon. Should I?
