Spike Lee Takes Over Former Michael Mann Project ‘Gold’
By Russ Fischer/May 17, 2013 4:37 pm EST
One of those other potential efforts was Gold, a film that follows a 1993 mining scandal, featuring a prospector who found “one of the largest gold mines in the world in the Indonesian jungle.” It has been likened to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but in what respects beyond the simple prospector angle, we don’t know for certain.
Mann may have moved on, but Gold still lives. Spike Lee is now attached to direct the film, based on the script by Patrick Massett and John Zinman.
The Wrap reports that the film might be Lee’s next, after the completion and release of Oldboy. But there’s the question of scheduling for whatever actor is cast as the main character. Paul Haggis, who once considered directing and originally brought the project to Mann, is still producing.
As far as the story goes, the background for Gold is interesting. It’s a story that almost has more to do with what happened on the stock market than what took place in Indonesia.
Then independent reports said there was actually no gold in Busan. Cue the crash. There was a mysterious death, and a massive investor fallout. You can almost hear the papers and shareholders screaming more than fifteen years later.
So the conflict is pretty obvious, but precisely how it will be presented as a film script is open to question. Will it take place mostly on the ground in Indonesia, or between there, the board room, and the stock market?
Oldboy opens on October 11, and we may know more about Gold before that.
