1997’s neo-noir film L.A. Confidential is easily a huge turning point in Hollywood, it earned Kim Basinger an Oscar while essentially making Australian actors Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce stars. The film’s success is undeniable, however, when a sequel was pitched a few years back, Warner Bros. seemingly didn’t want anything to do with it.
The original’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland spoke with The Ringer (via The Playlist), revealing he had developed a direct sequel set in the mid-70s with author James Ellroy (his novel was adapted for the first movie). He had even secured original cast members Crowe and Pearce to reprise their roles. The kicker is that he wanted the late Chadwick Boseman to play a youg cop, the pitch was ultimately rejected by the studio.
A few years ago, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Brian Helgeland went to Warner Bros. with what seemed like a dynamite movie pitch: a sequel to L.A. Confidential, the 1997 Hollywood cop drama he cowrote with director Curtis Hanson. Helgeland had already secured a top-tier cast, including returning Confidential costars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, alongside Chadwick Boseman, who’d be playing a young police officer. He’d developed a new story with L.A. Confidential novelist James Ellroy, one that would be set in the mid-’70s.
“We worked the whole thing out. It was great. And Warners passed,” Helgeland told The Ringer.
Yet another example of studio executives having terrible taste when selecting or rejecting film projects.
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL – Three policemen, each with his own motives and obsessions, tackle the corruption surrounding an unsolved murder at a downtown Los Angeles coffee shop in the early 1950s. Detective Lieutenant Exley (Guy Pearce), the son of a murdered detective, is out to avenge his father’s killing. The ex-partner of Officer White (Russell Crowe), implicated in a scandal rooted out by Exley, was one of the victims. Sergeant Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) feeds classified information to a tabloid magnate (Danny DeVito).
SOURCE: THE RINGER
THE RONIN 