I asked recently about preposterous casting, inviting readers to invent the most ridiculous pairing of actor and role imaginable. But no one came close to this, which is real (via the Guardian’s Lost in Showbiz blog):
[T]he first greatest of all the vanity projects is unquestionably Seagal’s Genghis Khan epic, which the On Deadly Ground legend first mentioned in 1998. He even got around to writing a script, which he instantly burnished by attaching himself to the project as director and star. Since then? Well, it remains tantalisingly unproduced, despite various missions to China to scout locations and actors. Oh, and the mafia got involved. The usual.
So imagine my delight to read a dispatch from last week’s 2nd International Action Film festival in the Kazakhstan capital Astana, at which Seagal appears to be combining guest-of-honour duties with his usual humanitarian commitments. Apparently, he told reporters that the US movie industry was in the doldrums – stay with this – and that he would now make the film with Russian and Kazakh cinematographers. “We are not only working on the plot, but also settling financial issues,” he explained, adding that his friend, the mayor of Astana, was going to help him.
Do we dare to dream?
Dare to dream, movie lovers. Dare to dream.
