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Columbia, New Line team for
next Sandler pic
 While
most studios would love to have Adam Sandler’s
next film, it looks likely that that pic will be shared
by rivals New Line and Columbia. The studios are in
talks to co-produce a comic script that Sandler’s
partner Tim Herlihy has written. The reason for sharing:
Columbia owns the script, but New Line has the actor’s
next movie.
Herlihy got into the project with the intention of creating
an homage to the 1936 Frank Capra-directed Columbia
classic Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, the story of a small-town
poet who inherits a fortune and sets New York on its
ear with his unflagging honesty. Herlihy has ended up
with a script that bears little relation to the original
film; it will bear an original title and not be considered
a remake.
New Line, which just completed production on Sandler
starrer Little Nicky, has the lock on the thesp’s
next acting job, and has developed several vehicles
with him. One is a comedy written by Paul Thomas Anderson,
who is a big Sandler fan and who would direct the film,
with Emily Watson possibly co-starring. Another is The
Five Johnsons, a comedy in which Sandler would play
multiple roles.
While those are certainly viable options for Sandler,
the film he’d like to make is the one that Herlihy
wrote at Columbia, which just got strong test scores
for Joe Dirt, the David Spade comedy that Sandler and
his Happy Madison partner Jack Giarraputo produced.
The Columbia and New Line brass, along with Sandler’s
reps at Brillstein-Grey and Endeavor, have been negotiating
through the week, trying to do some horse trading to
make the pic partnership feasible. Such dealing is not
uncommon; indeed, Miramax has gotten a foothold into
several high-profile pics generated by Columbia and
other studios because it held options on the services
of a star or a director.
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