By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Millennium Locates RAMPART

Posted Friday, September 23rd, 2011 - Comments Off on Millennium Locates RAMPART
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September 23, 2011 — Millennium Entertainment CEO Bill Lee announced today that the company has acquired U.S. rights to Oren Moverman’s critical smash RAMPART, which had its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. Millennium Entertainment will release the film theatrically this year with newly appointed Millenium Films’ Mark Gill consulting on the project. Moverman and acclaimed crime fiction writer James Ellroy wrote the screenplay, with Moverman directing a cast that includes Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Ice Cube, Brie Larson, and Ned Beatty. The film is produced by Lawrence Inglee (Lightstream Pictures), Ben Foster, Clark Peterson and Ken Kao (Waypoint Entertainment). Paul Currie, Michael DeFranco, Garrett Kelleher and Lila Yacoub serve as executive producers. Sierra/Affinity is representing the international rights to the film, which have been sold to a majority of territories around the globe.

Officer Dave Brown (Harrelson) is a Vietnam vet and a Rampart Precinct cop, dedicated to doing “the people’s dirty work” and asserting his own code of justice, often blurring the lines between right and wrong to maintain his action-hero state of mind. When he gets caught on tape beating a suspect, he finds himself in a personal and emotional downward spiral as the consequences of his past sins and his refusal to change his ways in light of a department-wide corruption scandal seal his fate. Brown internalizes his fear, anguish and paranoia as his world, complete with two ex-wives who are sisters, two daughters, an aging mentor dispensing bad advice, investigators galore, and a series of seemingly random women, starts to unravel. In the end, what is left is a human being stripped of all his pretense, machismo, chauvinism, arrogance, sexism, homophobia, racism, aggression, misanthropy; but is it enough to redeem him as a man?

“Oren’s is one of the great new voices in American film,” stated Millennium Entertainment’s CEO Bill Lee. “In RAMPART, he has created a compelling, genre-bending picture that is not only a poignant look at one man’s fall, but also an exploration of the conflict that often lies between masculinity and redemption.”

“I first worked with Mark Gill back during his time at Warner Independent and have kept up a great relationship with him over the years,” said Moverman, who previously co-wrote and directed THE MESSENGER, and whose writing credits include I’M NOT THERE and JESUS’ SON. “I have the utmost confidence that the Millennium team will take RAMPART to great heights.” Moverman is repped by WME and NY Office.

Noted producers Inglee and Kao: “Bill Lee, Brooke Ford and Andy Gruenberg have an exciting new vision for distributing and marketing intelligent, groundbreaking cinema. They’ve shown tremendous passion for this project and we’re thrilled to have them on board.”

Vincent Scordino negotiated the deal on behalf of Millennium Entertainment. Alexis Garcia negotiated on behalf of WME Global.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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