EXCLUSIVE: Nicholas Celozzi — a co-writer and producer on the Barry Levinson JFK flick Assassination — has filed a lawsuit towards the movie’s financier and manufacturing outfit 308 US.
Initially filed by Celozzi in an LA County courtroom final November, the swimsuit will go earlier than a decide in April who will resolve whether or not the authorized motion can proceed.
Celozzi, an LA-based producer, accuses 308 of a number of contractual breaches. 308 contests these claims, has filed a movement to dismiss and has supplied a remark under.
The swimsuit is messy and largely born out of a number of sophisticated manufacturing agreements signed earlier than Levinson’s involvement within the venture. April’s listening to would be the newest stage within the months-long authorized standoff. The meat and potatoes are as follows.
Assassination is the most recent incarnation of a venture launched by Celozzi about claims that his nice uncle, Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, organized the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Celozzi wrote the primary screenplay, titled 2 Days/1963, and set Pulitzer-prize winner David Mamet to direct, after a re-write, in 2022. We broke the information again then. Celozzi and Mamet agreed to share the writing credit score.
The submitting claims Celozzi and Mamet later hashed out a deal to license the screenplay to 308, which might produce and finance the movie with Mamet directing underneath a $850,000 rights deal. An A-list ensemble, together with Al Pacino, John Travolta, Viggo Mortensen, Shia LaBeouf, and Courtney Love was hooked up to star.
Celozzi’s swimsuit accuses 308 of later firing Mamet as director and changing him with Levinson with out authorization. Celozzi claims the last-minute change was made to halt the venture and conceal that 308 and its mum or dad proprietor Corey Giant Group didn’t have all the cash to finance the movie. Following this, the entire movie’s unique forged, excluding Al Pacino, stepped again from the venture, in accordance with the submitting.
The submitting additional claims the studio deliberately eliminated Celozzi’s writing credit score on the movie from press releases, screenplay copies, and advertising supplies. Celozzi argues that 308 and the movie’s former gross sales firm Arclight conspired to current Mamet — a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright — as the only real screenwriter to spice up worldwide rights gross sales. Celozzi additionally contests the historic accuracy of Levinson and 308’s script.
The submitting claims that Mamet launched a number of fictional components in his rewrites, together with a storyline involving the investigative reporter Dorothy Kilgallen. Consequently, the swimsuit states that each one three events agreed to separate the venture’s core story into two separate options, a fictionalized model based mostly on the rewritten screenplay [Assassination] and a second true crime model based mostly on the unique screenplay, which Celozzi would develop and produce with one other director. The caveat was that 308 couldn’t declare, in promotional materials, that their venture was the true story of the Giancana crime household’s involvement in JFK’s assassination. Celozzi claims the corporate breached the demand, which brought on “confusion within the market” and impeded his capacity to supply his true-crime venture.
Levinson and Arclight, which was was beforehand dealing with gross sales on the venture, weren’t instantly out there for remark. Pia Patatian’s Cloud9 Studios is now procuring the venture and will likely be taking the movie to the upcoming EFM. Celozzi’s authorized representatives referred us again to the submitting.
In response to our strategy, representatives for 308 stated Celozzi’s lawsuit is a “pathetic try to seize media consideration and extract cash that isn’t owed, on a venture that the plaintiff had little to do with.”
“The plaintiff has been inexplicably and unsuccessfully making an attempt to sabotage the venture for fairly a while, and this grievance, filled with falsehoods and exaggerations, is in furtherance of that misguided quest,” the rep stated to us in a press release.
“The lawsuit is purposefully imprecise and incomprehensible, and that’s as a result of the plaintiff has no case. Plain and easy. The contracts plaintiff hooked up to the grievance make crystal clear that my consumer wins the day as a matter of legislation. We now have filed a movement to dismiss this frivolous case, and will likely be submitting counterclaims of our personal.”
Celozzi is searching for $1M in damages. Regardless of the swimsuit, we perceive there are ambitions to start manufacturing on the movie within the coming months. There’s been some toing and froing on casting. Our newest reporting was that Jared Leto was in talks to star alongside Jessica Chastain, Brendan Fraser, Bryan Cranston, and Al Pacino. The thriller is alleged to comply with a feminine crime reporter Dorothy Kilgallen (Chastain), who suspects that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone in President John F Kennedy’s homicide.
Celozzi may also be at EFM along with his true crime venture titled November 1963: The Killing of a President. Roland Joffé (The Mission) is hooked up to direct. K5 is promoting the movie.
Levinson, an Oscar-winner, is greatest identified for Hollywood classics resembling Rain Man, Avalon, Bugsy, and Good Morning, Vietnam. He debuted his newest venture, Bucks County, USA, at this 12 months’s Sundance Movie Pageant.
