Modified On January 3, 2007
Not sure why Universal would want to change it, but…
On August 13 of 2005, we posted about how Joe Carnahan was greenlighted to direct “Smokin’ Aces,” which, at the time, was supposed to be about “an FBI agent supervising a manhunt for a standup comedian (Piven) who has decided to squeal on the mob.”
Well, the movie comes out at the end of the month and now Piven plays a magician. A “sleazy” magician.
Apparently, the director isn’t all that shook up about it. He tells CanMag.com that the script that you can download there represents the one that the studio originally approved, but overall, he sounds upbeat.
Still, it makes no sense to change the character from a comic when comedy has never been hotter. But, we suppose those studio execs know what they’re doing, right? We downloaded the script. No comic. A magician. Where’d Dark Horizons get the idea that the main character was a comic? Perhaps when the script was bouncing around H-wood. Maybe the way to sell a script these days is to pitch the main character as a comic… yeah, right!