Steven Spielberg’s next film will be an adaptation of the Mary Chase play Harvey which has previously yielded the classic 1950 film starring James Stewart. Harvey is about a man who lives with his sister and her daughter and is friends with a six foot tall invisible rabbit and its effect on the family and community. Spielberg will be directing from a script by novelist Jonathan Tropper which moves the play into contemporary times. Pre-production and casting is supposed to begin immediately with shooting aimed for early next year.
I can’t say I’m very excited about this one. Now, I’m unfamiliar with the play and its several adaptations, including the apparently great James Stewart one, but if there is already a class film born of this play, I don’t think we need another, let alone from Spielberg. That’s especially true when he continues to not touch other projects he’s had sitting on the shelf for years, like his Abraham Lincoln biopic starring Liam Neeson or Interstellar, the hard sci-fi space travel film scripted by Jonathan Nolan.
Steven Spielberg also has The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in post-production after directing the motion/performance capture earlier this year. That film won’t be released until December 23rd, 2011 in the US, and a month or two earlier for international markets.
