Tony Kushner Revising Spielberg Passion Project

Variety.com is reporting that Tony, Emmy, Drama Desk and Pulitzer Prize celebrated playwright Tony Kushner is hard at work on Steven Spielberg's much anticipated epic about Abraham Lincoln. This Lincoln project has been on the DreamWorks roster for several years, delays being caused by budget constraints and location complications.  This is the second collaboration for Kushner and Spielberg: Spielberg produced and directEd Kushner's "Munich" in 2005.

Spielberg now has good company in the Lincoln arena, as Robert Redford recently announced plans for his own film about Lincoln, starring James McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn and directed by Redford himself. This will mark Redford's first directing effort since the widely rejected "Lions for Lambs" in 2007.  Redford's film is set to begin filming next month, with independent funding from Joe Ricketts.

Spielberg has fully endorsed the effort, telling Variety that "We are very happy that Redford will be doing this Lincoln movie. It is completely different from what our DreamWorks Lincoln movie will be, and we believe that it will add to the commercial potential of our film. Lincoln as a subject is inexhaustible."

The movies are poised to be quite dissimilar: whereas Redford is showcasing the story of a young woman accused of conspiring against Lincoln, Spielberg is reportedly attacking the legendary figure with a wider lens, focusing on Lincoln's experience with the Civil War.

Tony Kushner is the author of over 30 plays and multiple screenplays and published essays.  He is best known for Angels in America (a play in two parts: Millennium Approaches, and Perestroika), which ran on Broadway and was made into a wildly successful HBO film; Hydriotaphia; Slavs!: Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; and the book for the musical Caroline, or Change. His new translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children was performed at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 2006 starring Meryl Streep and directed by George C. Wolfe. Kushner has also adapted S. Ansky's play, The Dybbuk.  His screenplays include Munich (produced and directed by Steve Spielberg in 2005), the 2006 documentary feature Wrestling With Angels that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was directed by Freida Lee Mock. He is the recipient of numerous awards and nominations, including Tony, Olivier, Pulitzer Prize, Drama Desk and Emmy accolades.

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