Last year, the world was awaiting the Christmas Day release of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. Then, suddenly, the film was postponed to mid-2013.
At the time, there was a lot of chatter about Warner Bros. and Luhrmann at odds, with the director eager to do reshoots and the studio refusing to foot the bill. Luhrmann ended up raising the finances himself and while we may never know the full story of what went down behind closed doors, Gatsby is now due in theaters on May 10. Days later, the film will also open the Cannes Film Festival.
Luhrmann spoke with the Herald Sun and said that financial squabbles aside, heavy rains ended up delaying the film. "As we were shooting, Sydney was being drenched day in and day out by La Niña, some of the wettest weather on record, and so we had to shut down shooting and then resume shooting the following year."
Fans of F. Scott Fitzgerlad's book should prepare themselves for a slight twist. Luhrmann told Life & Times that, "one of the big devices in the book is that the story is told from inside the mind of Nick Carraway… [he is] a watcher of and participator in the story. In fact, in the novel, Fitzgerald very deftly alludes to the fact that Nick is writing a book about Jay Gatsby."
He continues, "So [co-writer] Craig [Pearce] and I were looking for a way that we could show, rather than just have disembodied voiceover throughout the whole film, show Nick actually dealing with the writing, dealing with his experience of Gatsby, as he does in the novel."
Are you curious to see how Luhrmann re-worked Fitzgerald's classic book or did the footage you saw in last week's trailer turn you off on this film?
