The studio isn’t looting its library titles: MGM, which has seen many of its assets pillaged during previous ownership regimes, sold the Heston film to Ted Turner in the 1980s. MGM actually released the 1959 Charlton Heston-starrer Ben-Hur, as well as the 1925 silent film Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ.
MGM, which emerged from bankruptcy and is raising new funding after Skyfall crossed $1 billion worldwide gross and The Hobbit heads to the $900 million mark, is buying a Ben-Hur spec by Keith Clarke (he scripted the Peter Weir-directed The Way Back), and the package comes with Sean Daniel and Joni Levin attached to produce, and Clarke and Jason Brown exec producing. The studio is planning to unleash a new version of Ben-Hur, based on the 1880 Lew Wallace novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ, which outsold every book but The Bible until it was eclipsed by Gone With The Wind.
EXCLUSIVE: What a difference $2 billion in late fall box office business has done for MGM‘s ambitions.
0 kommentar(er)
