There’s a long and distinguished history of books written in prison, but I’m not aware of too many films made there. Or even edited there. But Roman Polanksi, who now sits in prison awaiting word of whether he’ll be extradited to the US, wants to finish his film The Ghost from his jail cell.
“The film will be finished,” Henning Molfenter, co-producer on The Ghost, told The Hollywood Reporter. “We will meet all our deadlines and all of our obligations with distributors.”
Polanski had a rough cut of the film finished when he was jailed, and he’s trying to get the movie done in time to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February. It’s unclear how exactly he’s finishing the movie, but I imagine it’s not unlike how Wes Anderson made The Fantastic Mr. Fox, except instead of emails he’ll be communicating through intermediaries. And hogging up precious jail pay phone time. You get shanked for that sort of shit, Roman!
The Ghost is based on a Robert Harris bestseller, and according to Yahoo! is the story of a former British Prime Minister, played by Pierce Brosnan, who is accused of war crimes. Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter who uncovers his dark secret after he is hired to complete the Prime Minister’s memoirs.
“Whether the film can rise above the circumstances in which (Polanski)
now finds himself, I don’t know,” Harris said. “We will test
to the upper limits the notion that there’s no such thing as bad
publicity.”