With production set to begin net week, Deadline reports that work on Alexander Payne’s new film has come to a screeching halt after a rights dispute has come to light about the film’s subject.
The film, written by Erlend Loe (Nord), was previously described as a father/daughter story in which a Danish journalist takes a road trip with his teenage daughter across the U.S. as he works on a story for a newspaper. The Danish journalist in question, Karl Ove Knausgarb, had a change of heart according to the trade and withdrew the rights to his lifestory from being turned into a feature film. Deadline reports that attempts were made to coax him into allowing hte film to proceed but they were turned down by Knausgarb. Mads Mikkelsen was set to star in the feature film.
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Netflix was hoping to release the project next year in time for awards season, planning a tentative fall 2020 release planned. However, this film is not the only project in the works from Payne, who has been shopping around his project The Menu, which is set to star Emma Stone (The Favourite) and Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel).
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Payne has seen almost exclusive acclaim in his over 20 years in the industry, beginning with the 1996 comedy Citizen Ruth and following it up with 1999’s Election, for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and going on to write and direct the Golden Globe-nominated About Schmidt, the Oscar-winning Sideways and The Descendants and the Oscar-nominated Nebraska. His 2017 film Downsizing has become the black sheep of his career following a mixed reception.
(Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)
