Joe Dante all but owes the start of his work in film to pulp movie producer Roger Corman – Dante began his career editing trailers for Corman's company. Now he's making a movie about the man himself, looking to start work on The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes next year.
This has been something of a passion project for Corman, who has been planning to make the movie for several years. It'll dig into a particular period of Corman's career when he was preparing to make 1967 cult pic The Trip.
Dante is getting support from Company X, a new production outfit co-founded by Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, Josh C. Waller, and Lisa Whalen, who are expanding their output from the indie horror movies they've been backing, such as this year's The Greasy Strangler. The company aided Dante in staging a live reading of the script last month, which featured Bill Hader as Corman, with Jason Ritter as Peter Fonda (who starred in The Trip). Entertainment Weekly's report on the film's planned 2017 shoot doesn't mention if that will be the final cast, but there's a good chance they will still be attached.