Liev Schreiber will star in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway‘s penultimate novel Across The River And Into The Trees for Tribune Pictures and The Exchange, who announced the project this week. Paula Ortiz is directing from Peter Flannery‘s script.
Schreiber will play Colonel Richard Cantwell, a character partially based on Hemingway’s friend Colonel Charles T. Lanham. In the 1950 novel, Cantwell is duck hunting in Northern Italy during the closing days of WWII and involved in a romance with a much younger woman, having been damaged both physically and mentally during World War I and trying to come to terms with his own mortality.
This is not the first time an adaptation of the Hemingway novel has been attempted. A previous incarnation of the project was due to re-team the Goldeneye pairing of Pierce Brosnan and Martin Campbell, but it never came to fruition.
Schreiber has always been a versatile actor that never really got a true chance to be a leading man on film, although he’s probably now best known for playing the lead in Ray Donovan. However, starring in a Hemingway adaptation is usually a sign your career is just fine.
Like a lot of recently-announced projects, it will be introduced to the potential buyers at the virtual Toronto International Film Festival, due to begin on Thursday. The film itself will start production next month in Venice and the surrounding areas under COVID-19 guidelines.
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