I don’t wanna jinx it by talking about it or anything, but it looks like director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) is finally getting a chance to make his long-planned project about the notorious brood of backstabbers named Borgia.
Jordan has roped buoyant beauty Scarlett Johansson and randy thesp Colin Farrell in for his drama Borgia, which examines the 15th century Spanish family’s greed and duplicity that eventually led to a papacy takeover, where they purportedly ran the Vatican as a crime syndicate. Machiavelli was a big fan – his story “The Prince” is supposedly based on Cesare, the most evil duke before Isaac Hayes came along. That’ll be Colin playing the manipulative bastard (whose likeness is believed to have influenced paintings of Jesus since then, which is a curious irony), while Johansson is his resplendently chesty sister Lucretia.
The lingering project has previously slid through the fingers of some high-profile talent, including Viggo Mortensen, Ewan McGregor, Christina Ricci and Italian delicacy Monica Bellucci.