Bonnie and Clyde have been tackled surprisingly few times over the years, with few contenders challenging Penn’s 1967 classic starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. A group of producers (one with ties to wrestling’s Vince McMahon!) are hoping to create a more realistic, hard-edged version of the tale and are looking to Neil Burger to helm it.
Burger is known for The Illusionist and the more recent Limitless, though his name blew up further when he was became associated with the Uncharted video game adaptation. He’s still on that project, and in no way committed to this one that could follow it, but the producers hope he’ll get behind a script written by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air) based on a new book by Jeff Guinn, that tells a more detail-oriented tale of the couple’s exploits.
Called (ahem) Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie And Clyde, the novel was published just last year and sniffed out some new facts about each half of the pair, including that Clyde’s beginning as a murder was tied into sexual abuse he encountered in prison, and that Bonnie began as an astute schoolgirl before joining up with Clyde’s mostly dumbass crew. Despite surviving off of minor gas station and grocery store robberies amidst mostly unsuccessful bank robberies, the youth and sex element of their story helped the media spin their crimes into a huge American myth. It also latched onto the image of Bonnie as a violent runaway, gang-banging, cigar-smoking small town vixen who may or may not have actually even actively participated in much of the notorious violence.
The producers have stated no specific intention to make this the gritty Bonnie and Clyde movie, but by basing their story on Guinn’s book, we’re sure to be in for a more grounded tale. This could be a good project for Burger, and a worthwhile story to tell– media frenzy spinning real-life events is as potent as ever. Obviously Natural Born Killers had this on its mind while telling its own Bonnie & Clyde story as well, but I think even Stone’s film ignored some of the focus on the media that was present in Tarantino’s original script (it’s been ages since I’ve compared the two, so correct me if my memory is faulty).
Are you interested in seeing these two figures on the screen again, or is this era still tainted from the disaster that was Public Enemies? Think Burger is the man for the job? Let us know on twitter, in the comments below, or the boards above!
Source | Deadline