Hollywood finally has found the financing to produce a script about a 1970s cross-country road trip taken by future Republican political operatives Karl Rove and Lee Atwater,
Deadline Hollywood reports.
Wes Jones' script for the dark comedy "College Republicans" has been around since 2009, but has been unable to find financing. It was the No. 1 pick of screenplays in 2010's Black List survey. https://blcklst.com/
According to Deadline, production will begin in the fall with Daniel Radcliffe playing Atwater and Dane DeHaan as Rove. Amanda Seyfried also stars. It will be directed by "Kill Your Darlings" director John Krokidas.
According to reviews of the early versions of the script, the movie takes place in 1973 when Rove was running for national chairman of the College Republicans. He met Atwater, who became his campaign manager, in Atlanta and the two took a trip across the southern states in a Ford Pinto in an attempt to win the election for Rove.
Scriptshadow.net said the screenplay was good, but lacked any originality normally seen by Black List favorites.
Rove is portrayed as straight-laced and unhappy with Atwater's anything-to-win attitude, though he gives in when he sees the tactics work.
Rove and Atwater did take the southern states road trip in 1973, but many of the events portrayed in the screenplay are fictionalized.
"The script uses our 30-year experience of Karl Rove as a public figure and boils it down and encapsulates it in one journey," Greg Shephard, one of Jones' managers," was quoted by the
Los Angeles Times in 2010.
But the Times' Steven Zeitchik wasn't sure at the time such a film would sell. Atwater, who became an adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, died in 1991. Rove, who worked for President George W. Bush, is still very much on the political scene.
Zeitchik argued that neither man is a household name outside the circles of political junkies, and, among them, Rove elicits either love or hate, but perhaps not enough interest to sell movie tickets.
"A studio would inevitably take pains to portray a film as being above ideology, but it's far from a sure thing that the large number of Americans who consider themselves Republicans would embrace a Hollywood take on Karl Rove," Zeitchik wrote.
In February 2014, John Hayward, writing at
Breitbart.com, wondered, where were the screenplays of "a light-hearted buddy comedy about Barack Obama’s youthful misadventures with his terrorist mentor, Bill Ayers, or maybe his crazy days with the Choom Gang?"
Rove's election was contentious, and the outcome eventually was decided by then-Republican National Committee Chairmen George H.W. Bush.