NOW JOHNNY DEPP MIGHT MAKE A WEST MEMPHIS THREE MOVIE, TOO
Man oh man, the movie industry is IN LOVE with The West Memphis Three. Just to review, we already have Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the latest West Memphis Three documentary from directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky; West of Memphis, ANOTHER documentary on the trio, produced by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings), who also helped fund the WM3’s legal team for seven years; and The Devil’s Knot, a non-documentary feature film that writer/director Atom Egoyan is making with stars Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon. A
And now it looks like Johnny Depp may be producing YET ANOTHER non-documentary feature about the plight of The West Memphis Three — this one based on a book by an actual member of The Three, Damien Echols. From Deadline:
“Johnny Depp and his producing partner Christi Dembrowski and their Infinitum Nihil production shingle have yet another interesting project in development. They’ve optioned film rights to the soon-to-be-published and as-yet-untitled book by Damien Echols which reveals his experiences on death row after his wrongful conviction and subsequent wrongful 18-year imprisonment for the 1993 murder of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The memoir will be published in September 2012 by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Books.”
Depp, you may or may not be aware, took Echols to Disneyland after he was released from prison, AND got a tattoo with him. I’m not gonna make any cracks about famous people suddenly wanting to be involved with a cause celebre, because as far as I’m concerned, Echols deserves a blowjob from Scarlett Johansson for what he went through. But, um, yeah.
From a simple business perspective, I can’t quite see anyone wanting to fund a project which will compete with The Devil’s Knot, since that film is going into production sometime in the next couple of months, and already has two Oscar winners attached. Then again, if the movie is a hit, others may want to cash in on the sensation — and Hollywood is the industry that made competing films about killer asteroids and animated insects. So, I guess we’ll see what happens with this one.
In the meantime, I’ll certainly be curious to read Echols’ book when it’s released…
-AR
