Here’s one more project to keep Ridley Scott away from the less and less likely Blood Meridian — he’s working with Fox 2000 to tell the story of the Gucci family and fashion dynasty. It’s a post-strike project to be written by Charles Randolph who, as the writer of The Life of David Gale, was the weak link in the Interpreter scriptwriting trio with Scott Frank and Steve Zallian — or so it seems on paper.
Yeah, I groaned at first, too, but this actually isn’t as dismal a prospect as it seems. (It sure won’t be any Pret a Porter.) For one, there’s not much difference between mob and fashion families, once you factor out the legitimacy of their product. The Gucci clan has had as much intrigue, glam and excess as any cinematic mob organization, especially during the ’70s and ’80s, which the film will chronicle.
Variety‘s plot summation:
The catalyst will be Maurizio Gucci, the grandson of founder Guccio Gucci who emerged as the unlikely winner of a bloody power struggle to run the family business. Just when Maurizio was on the verge of his greatest success — a daring fashion show debuting the clothes of newcomer Tom Ford — his penchant for accumulating enemies caught up with him; Maurizio was gunned down in front of his Milan apartment in 1995.
Done wrong, this is just another dash of reality TV bullshit; done right it’s Gore Vidal material, will all the same potential for great cinema as the story of Frank Lucas. Ridley Scott knocked Lucas out of the park, so I’m ready to see him tackle this. And since I don’t have the confidence that anyone (even Scott) can do Blood Meridian properly, I don’t mind that being back-burnered for a while longer.
Scott has to finish Body of Lies first (which at his current pace could probably be accomplished in the time it took me to write this article) and then might be forced by strike circumstances into actually taking five minutes off.