First performed in 1988, David Mamet's Speed The Plow has been a hit on Broadway and in London's West End, and is now finally making the jump to the very industry it satirises. Mamet himself is writing a film adaptation. Randall Emmett, George Furla and Irwin Winkler, the team behind Martin Scorsese's Silence, will produce along with Wayne Marc Godfrey (London Fields).
Speed-The-Plow involves new studio chief Bobby Gould, who's in the market for a hit to shore up his tenuous position. His colleague Charlie Fox comes to him with a project that he guarantees will snare a star who usually only works for a rival studio. But the pair then get distracted by a bet over which of them can sleep with Fox's secretary Karen, who they've involved in their creative process and has her own industry agenda.
The original Broadway run starred Ron Silver, Joe Mantegna and Madonna, and subsequent revivals have attracted names like Kevin Spacey, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Michelle Kelly, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Alicia Silverstone, Lindsay Lohan and Elizabeth Moss. Casting the movie version shouldn't be a problem...
Far from Mamet's first work to target Tinseltown, he was also behind Wag The Dog and State And Main, while the business with Bruce Willis's beard in What Just Happened is based on the production of The Edge, which was another of his screenplays.
"Mamet’s play is iconic," says Emmett, "and as relevant today as it was when it first hit Broadway. We are excited to be able to work with Mamet and Winkler and bring this film to the cinema."