A few years back, Greg Silverman at Warners offered emerging screenwriter Chad St. John the job of writing a revenge movie that didn’t have any dialogue in it. St. John was up to the challenge, and he returned with an impressive screenplay that had less than a dozen lines of spoken words in just over 70 pages – most of which come right at the end. It’s been on the Black List since 2009, but even after going through a difficult menu of leading men (before landing on Gerard Butler), the film was set to actually happen soon.
According to Deadline Hollywood, that’s no longer the case. Production has shut down, and the crew was told to go home.
Apparently the independent production houses in charge – Envision Entertainment, Foresight Entertainment, and Emmet/Furla Films – could not meet the Warner Bros. imposed (via Dark Castle) drop-dead delivery date of March 31, 2013, as it would have meant only having 12 weeks of post-production. Without the domestic release, the foreign distribution was in question, and the film was unable to secure a bond. So that’s the ball game.
It’s definitely an ambitious concept, so it’s even more of a shame that it got this close to rolling only to send the cameras back. With any hope, they’ll be able to regroup, work out a new schedule, and make this happen.
