‘Disturbed by Neeson’s comments’
Filmmaker Steve McQueen has said he was disturbed by Liam Neeson’s comments about seeking vengeance on a black person after the rape of a friend. The actor, who starred in McQueen’s film Widows last year, said that as a young man, he had wanted to kill a black person after someone close to him told him said she had been attacked by a black man.
McQueen told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My reaction was I was disturbed, I was upset and finally I was just disappointed. You never know what’s in people’s minds. You just never know.”
Neeson said he was compelled by a “primal” and “medieval” desire for revenge. When asked: “That’s not really primeval [sic] if race is involved, that’s … a learned behaviour and therefore something very uncomfortable indeed?” McQueen replied: “I just find racism very funny and very stupid and very silly. It’s absurd. I don’t even know how to answer that question, if you have to get stupid to answer that question I would rather keep my intelligence.”
To those who defended Neeson, McQueen said: “Can you identify a racist by looking at them? Neither can I.” Some people have called for a boycott of Neeson’s films as a result of the comments. Others, including former footballer John Barnes and author John Banville, have defended him.
Woody Allen’s next film in Spain
Woody Allen will return to filmmaking with backing from Spanish producers and is likely to make his next film in Spain. Variety magazine reports that Spanish production outfit Mediapro has confirmed it has signed a development deal with Allen. Mediapro previously worked with Allen on the Spain-set romcom Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which starred Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and Midnight in Paris, Allen’s highest grossing film to date.
No details of any project have been released, but Spanish newspaper El País reports that Allen’s producers have been scouting locations in the Basque city of San Sebastián, and are due to meet local officials.
The reports arrive two weeks after Allen launched legal action against Amazon, claiming the tech giant had broken a four-film deal it had signed in 2017. After making a TV series with Allen and the feature film Wonder Wheel, Amazon have not released A Rainy Day in New York, the first in the projected four-film agreement. Jennifer Salke, CEO of Amazon Studios, subsequently said in an interview with the New York Times: “We don’t have any plans to release any Woody Allen movies.” A Rainy Day in New York became engulfed in controversy after an article by Allen’s adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow titled “Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen?” appeared in the LA Times in December 2017.
Shatterhand: Next James Bond film
The next James Bond film is to shoot under the working title Shatterhand. Industry publication Production Weekly has included a listing in its February 21 newsletter for “Bond 25 w/t Shatterhand”, with shooting due to start at Pinewood studios on April 6. It appears to confirm longstanding rumours that Shatterhand is a contender for Bond 25’s official title. The name comes from an alias used by series supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Ian Fleming’s 1964 Bond novel You Only Live Twice. The news comes days after the film’s release date was pushed back to April 2020 amid reports of extensive script rewrites. Bourne Ultimatum writer Scott Z Burns has been hired to rework the screenplay for Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as 007. Original director Danny Boyle dropped out in August 2018 after “creative differences” with the producers, and there have since been script drafts by Paul Haggis and the series’ writing team Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.
