Reason #7,530 why the offer story is generally lame nine out of ten times. Other than the fact that it’s usually false or completely incorrect, it tends to be nothing more than a memo piece of information that leaks far too early; a twinkle in some studio head’s eye and a “wouldn’t it be nice?”-type thought that’s not based in any kind of concrete reality — it’s just an idea and when this info leaks, the talent doesn’t know about it, neither does their agent and the studio hasn’t even gone out with a formal offer yet. Sometimes when a formal offer does go out and when it’s delivered from a reliable trade paper, the information can be a bit more substantial, but often times a wishlist or offer story is to be treated with suspicion and/or held away so as not to let the redolent turd reach your nose.
Case in point, recent rumors that said an offer had been put out to Ryan Gosling to star in Doug Liman‘s in-the-works sci-fi project, “All You Need Is Kill” — an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka‘s time-travel action novel.
We spoke to Liman today about his new film “Fair Game” starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, which continues to expand its theater release this weekend (November 12), and he said all of it was news to him.
“Yeah, I don’t know where that came from,” Liman said about the on-the-rise actor, noting he’s a fan, but the picture is still gestating and no offer has been made. In fact, as he recently stated in a separate interview, Liman is mounting two different projects, his Untitled Moon colonization film, and “All You Need Is Kill,” and he’s not sure which one is coming next. “[Ryan’s] someone I’m a huge fan of, but we’re still developing the [‘All You Need Is Kill’] script. And so I have two projects that I’m aggressively pursuing, but I’ve also been working really hard on my TV show for USA Networks, ‘Covert Affairs.”
File under: debunked and far too early. More from this interview tomorrow, plus talk about “Fair Game,” the Moon project and more, later this week.
