When we’d last heard much about the biopic Big Eyes, about the artists William and Margaret Keane, Ryan Reynolds and Reese Witherspoon were to star as the famed couple-turned-enemies, and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski were looking to direct the film, which was to be produced by Tim Burton. Now, in hindsight, we should have known better than to think a film with paintings of kids with spooky-big eyes could possibly be directed by anyone other than Burton himself.
And so it shall be. Deadline reports Burton indeed took the reins on the project, and that Reynolds and Witherspoon were replaced by the far superior – at least in my eyes – Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams. The film has been in development for many years, promoted by Alexander and Karaszewski, who worked with Burton on his biopic adaptation Ed Wood. As if nailing a director and lead actors isn’t enough, Big Eyes also secured funding and distribution from The Weinstein Company, which will allow for production to begin at some point this summer.
Burton is hot off a busy but disappointing 2012, with Frankenweenie and Dark Shadows doing little to remind fans of his older films of his amazing storytelling skills. There is a wealth of material for him to draw from in the Keanes’ story, however, which tells the tale of their rise to fame as creators of extremely popular and kitschy paintings that ended in divorce and lawsuits, culminating in a court case to prove who actually painted the pictures in the first place.
Waltz was of course most recently the Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor for Tarentino’s Django Unchained and will be seen later this year in Terry Gilliam’s much-anticipated The Zero Theorem. Adams was last seen in in On the Road, Trouble With the Curve, and was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting actress role in The Master.
