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Hollywood Reporter

Columbia lands trophy stars for 'Big Fish' story
Fri Nov 15, 2:14 AM ET

By Zorianna Kit

LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Danny DeVito, Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi and "White Oleander" star Alison Lohman are in final negotations to join the cast of Columbia Pictures' adventure feature "Big Fish" for director Tim Burton.

The project goes into production on January 3 in Culver City CA, with Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup and Jessica Lange also starring.

Richard D. Zanuck, Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen are producing the project, which is based on Daniel Wallace's "Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions."

"Fish" revolves around a dying father (Finney) and his son (Crudup), who is trying to learn more about his dad by piecing together the stories he has gathered over the years.

The son winds up re-creating his elusive father's life in a series of legends and myths inspired by the few facts he knows. Through these tales, the son begins to understand his father's great feats -- and his great failings. McGregor will play Finney's character in the re-creation of the tales.

Lange will play the wife to Finney's character, with Lohman playing her as a younger woman in the tales. The other cast members are all key players in the stories, with DeVito starring as Amos, a man who runs a circus where McGregor's character works for a time; Buscemi as poet Norther Winslow; and Carter as Jenny, a woman featured prominently throughout.

John August adapted the "Fish" screenplay, which is being overseen by Columbia senior vp production Andrea Giannetti, who is reporting to production president Peter Schlessel.

'Big Fish' sets hook at Huntingdon

Huntingdon College has signed an agreement with Columbia Pictures/Big Fish Productions to film several scenes from the upcoming feature film on the Huntingdon campus.

"We have been working with the film location personnel and the Alabama Film Office on this project since April of last year," said Su Ofe, director of communications. In August, Big Fish Productions established their central operations for the film at the College's Cloverdale Campus, formerly Cloverdale Junior High School, just across Fairview Avenue from the College's main campus. "We were proud to support Columbia Pictures being able to locate the project here," said Ofe. "Now we are even more pleased that our beautiful campus will literally be part of the picture."

"In so many ways, we feel like this is our movie," said Ofe. "So far most of the pre-production work has occurred right across the street from our main campus, so we have watched the growth daily. Our students and recent graduates have been employed as interns and assistants in production, construction, casting, and other areas of the film. It's been great for the students, for the Cloverdale community, for the Montgomery area, and for the state of Alabama at the same time." Brian Kurlander, of the Alabama Film Office, has described this project as the largest in the state's history, with an expected $25,000,000 economic impact.

Huntingdon's main campus was designed by a member of the Olmsted family, famous for the design of Central Park, the Great Mall in Washington, D.C., and the Biltmore Estate. Since 2000 the campus has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and features Gothic architecture in buildings that surround a central space known as The Green. Scenes will be filmed on the main campus in Huntingdon's Flowers Hall, Miriam Jackson Home, outside on the campus grounds, and in Delchamps Student Center.

Big Fish, based on a novel of the same name by Alabama native Daniel Wallace, is the story of a father/son relationship and of the myths and realities that shaped the elder character's life. Actors Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Danny DeVito, Helena Bonham Carter and Steve Buscemi, among others, will star in the film. The movie is directed by Tim Burton (Planet of the Apes, Batman, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow) and produced by Richard Zanuck (Jaws, Driving Miss Daisy, The Verdict, Road to Perdition), Jinks/Cohen (American Beauty), and Arne Schmidt (XXX).

"I've been so impressed by the talented people behind the scenes' on this film. Columbia Pictures and Tim Burton have recruited a top-notch group of professionals who are exercising their vision right here in our city. Individuals who are contributing to the success of Big Fish also contributed to films such as Chicago, Road to Perdition, Antwone Fisher, A River Runs Through It, Rain Man, Bugsy, What Dreams May Come, The Man Who Wasn't There, Field of Dreams, All the Pretty Horses, O Brother, Where Art Thou, and The Truman Show, and many have been nominated for and won Academy Awards in their areas of expertise. Although the public has heard a great deal about the talent of the cast, I think it's important to note that the crew is just as talented, and I'm excited that they'll be able to do some of their work right in the building where I work every day" said Ofe.

A vision comes to life

John August sat at a table in Wetumpka on Monday, a few dozen yards from where Tim Burton and a film crew had begun the first day of shooting on "Big Fish," the screenplay he wrote and once thought might never be shot.

Even before the release of "Go," the critically acclaimed 1999 film for which he wrote his first major screenplay, August had asked Columbia Pictures to buy Daniel Wallace's "Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions."

The novel deals with a father-and-son relationship. When the son, a reporter in Paris, discovers that his father is dying, he returns to the small Southern town where he grew up to try and know his father better. It is through his father's tall tales that the son begins to understand the elusive man.

"I'd read it in manuscript form, and loved it," August said. "People at Columbia read it, and they responded like everyone seems to. They said 'Oh, that is just like my relationship with my father.'

"I met Dan Wallace in Virginia, and it was an amazing opportunity to talk with the writer about all the little secret layers of the book. One of the tales in it is based on 'The 12 Labors of Hercules,' and while I caught about half of it, he explained the rest to me. He and I continued to keep in touch through e-mail."

They've kept in touch more than four years now.

Since writing "Go," the 32-year-old writer has been on the go, co-writing "Charlie's Angels," "Titan A.E." and a sequel to "Charlie's Angels." He's also been hired to make last-minute script changes for movies such as "Jurassic Park 3" and "Scooby Doo."

It looked for a time as if "Big Fish" would flounder.

"The studio liked the screenplay, but they were nervous that it was both a very small and a giant movie," August said. "You had this very intimate movie, but with gigantic effects that weren't going to be cheap to do."

August said it appeared that Columbia wasn't going to tackle the project, which is when he took things into his own hands by "slipping" the script to some friends of his.

The friends, in this case, just happened to be Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, the team of producers who had just won the Oscar for "American Beauty."

They were interested, and so was Steven Spielberg.

"When producers like Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen said they wanted to make it, Columbia couldn't really say no," August said. "Spielberg was the trump card."

August met with Spielberg during the summer, talking about one of the script's main difficulties -- which characters to include and who to play them.

After some delays, Spielberg chose to make "Catch Me If You Can" instead.

"The great thing about being a Spielberg is that there are always great films to make when you want to make them," August said.

Other directors, including Ron Howard, expressed interest in the project, but after Tim Burton said he was interested, August said everyone believed they had the perfect match for the screenplay.

"He has this incredible style, plus he has been able to interweave it with smaller, intimate stories, such as 'Ed Wood,'" August said.

August is about to leave the set to fly to Los Angeles and then to Canada to start work on a new ABC crime drama series set in Alaska, but he will return about once a month to help with "Big Fish."

Already, he has written about 80 pages of changes while he has been on the set.

"Most of what I've done is small, but you are always refining things," he said. "You are looking at what Tim needs, what he can afford to shoot and just new ideas that come up along the way.

"The screenplay is like a blueprint to a house. It is a plan to show you how to construct it, but you are always changing it up until the last minute."

Those who have read Wallace's novel will discover "some really big changes from the book to the movie," August said.

"Will, the son, is mainly just the narrator in the novel, but he has become much more of a character in the movie. When I heard his wife was French, I decided there was really a need for her in the movie too, even though she is a complete invention of the movie.

"We used some of the fantasy scenes in the book, but changed others. For instance, in the movie there is a circus. The circus has always been in the script, but wasn't in the book. But the book has all these small stories through various parts of the father's life, and the circus was a way to bring them all together."

The script brought not just the stories together -- it also drew an A-list of stars.

When August talked about the cast, he never thought it would include Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Danny DeVito, Helena Bonham Carter, Steve Buscemi, Alison Lohman, Robert Guillaume and Marion Cotillard.

"It was a surprise to get a cast like this one," he said. "I expect that it was a combination of things -- everyone really has meaty roles, everyone wanted to work with Tim and everyone wanted to work with the other actors who were in the film. There are fun things to film here."

"Here" is Alabama, another casting decision of which August approves.

"It has added to the movie on every level," he said. "As grounded as this film needs to be at times, it needs a reality that you couldn't get on some Hollywood sound stage.

"You could spend $20 million and not get a river as beautiful as the one here," he adds, pointing at the Alabama River.