If you were going to cast a recognizable actor to make an indie film about Salvador Dali look like a good idea, Antonio Banderas is a pretty good choice. But that won’t change the fact that, if everything goes according to plan for the project about the surrealist’s full life story, the film will be directed by Simon West.
West has been talking about this movie for a couple of years; he optioned Jeremy Walters’ script in 2003. He even mentioned Banderas as a hopeful lead back in 2006. And while he made Con Air, When A Stranger Calls and Tomb Raider, the fact that he’s kept a torch for a pet project like this — and done so successfully — gives me some twinge of hope. And then I remember that he called it “like Amadeus meets Moulin Rouge“. But still. Maybe Con Air was just a really good way for West to transition to features from commercials. And the way that Cage’s hair flowed down his muscular shoulders prefigured the means by which this film will use CGI to blend art and color into Dali’s life story. Yeah, hell if I know. I got nothing here.
A couple other Dali pictures are in the works, too: the Pacino/Andrew Nicchol one and Little Ashes, which will feature Nick’s favorite tween vampire as the painter.