I’m hungry for more information on Cleo, the proposed 3D musical about Cleopatra from Steven Soderbergh. Thankfully, Variety’s Anne Thompson is ready to provide at least a tease of info. She talked to the director at the AFI reception for Che, and he gave up a couple nuggets of gold.
He’ll begin filming Cleo in April, and when asked about his favorite musical he proffered that the inspiration for the character is Rita Hayworth’s Gilda. “That’s the stylized, ripe tone he’s going for,” Thompson reports. Which is remarkable in a way, given the planned Guided By Voices song offerings. Even when Ric Ocasek produced a record for the band (1999’s cooly-received Do The Collapse, the demerits of which are offset by the pop appeal of ‘Teenage FBI’) they could rarely be called ‘ripe’. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.