How you know the world of cinema has changed forever, part 467: Now Al Pacino is hoovering up Steve Carell’s acting leftovers. All right, not so much… But Pacino is in early negotiations for a role in Imagine, a film that until recently had Carell attached.
Tangled writer Dan Fogelman is the driving force behind the movie, having penned the script and now gathered enough clout to make it his directorial debut.
Imagine finds an old rock star who suddenly decides to turn his life around after receiving a previously lost letter sent to him by John Lennon more than 40 years ago. Spurred on by the note from the music legend, he tracks down his estranged son. That co-starring part was earmarked for Carell, but he’s had to drop out due to “scheduling issues,” which roughly translated means he’d become attached to half the active comedy projects in Hollywood and realised that the robot duplicate he’d been building to help him do everything just wasn’t ready yet.
Fogelman’s rise has been meteoric – he contributed to Pixar’s Cars, wrote** Fred Claus**, then headed back to animation for both Bolt and Tangled. Since those jobs, he’s also penned Crazy, Stupid, Love (which stars Carell) for Warners, helped out on Cars 2 and is watching his latest, most personal script, My Mother’s Curse, get shot with Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand. Plus he has several projects bubbling away in development with one boasting Tom Cruise as its star.
Pacino doesn’t have a deal in place yet as he has his own busy career to work around, but he’s certainly interested…