Paul King, director of Paddington, is onboard the biopic of Fred Astaire starring Tom Holland.
They have guts even thinking about it. I like the idea of focusing on a period of his life rather than doing 80 years in two hours with corny montages to show the passing years. If it's a hit, it could be a trilogy: 1. the years with Adele from childhood through the 1920s; 2. the years with Ginger in the 1930s; 3. post-Ginger, the dawn of television, the amazing final years of productivity.
His young widow is taking the money. As rotten as that sounds, the silver lining to the silver pieces is the exposure to this generation of what talent is. I worked with Ted Mann, the father of Off Broadway, on his autobiography. The widow of Eugene O'Neill took a play to Mr. Mann and disregarded her late husband's will, which specified that his unperformed play, Long Day's Journey Into Night, not be performed until 50 years after his death due to its painful autobiographical nature. If she had respected her husband's wishes and not taken the play to Mr. Mann, the play would not have come out until 2003, when it would have had little impact as the subject matter was old hat by that time. So, the Widow Astaire may trigger a great cultural revival with this film, which I think Fred might approve of.
