Spielberg to Release New Film 'Lincoln' After 2012 Presidential Election
The world-renowned director Steven Spielberg has announced that his long time goal of making a film about Abraham Lincoln is finally happening.
The biopic will be based on the best-selling book “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and will cover the last four months of Lincoln’s life. The 16th president of the United States, “Lincoln” will follow the quest to abolish slavery and end the Civil War.
Filming will take place in Richmond, Va., where many buildings “look like Washington looked back during the Civil War,” Spielberg said, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
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“Lincoln” will not be a war movie, Spielberg assured. “There are battles in it, and being in Virginia, we have access to those historic battlefields. It is really a movie about the great work Abraham Lincoln did in the last months of his life.”
In the film, actor Daniel Day-Lewis of “Gangs of New York” will play Abraham Lincoln, and Sally Field will play his wife, Mary Todd.
Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican leader and congressman from Pennsylvania, will be played by Tommy Lee Jones. Stevens played a pivotal role in writing the legislation that funded the American Civil War, and was staunchly against slavery.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt who appeared in “Inception” is to take on the role of Robert Todd Lincoln, President Lincoln’s eldest son.
Filming will begin this fall, and will be released next year through Disney Touchstone.
“The movie will be purposely coming out after next year’s election,” said Spielberg. “I didn’t want it to become a political fodder.”
Spielberg is typically a U.S. Democratic Party supporter, and has donated over $800,00 to the party and its nominees.
In 2001, the director resigned as a member of the advisory board for Boy Scouts of America over his disapproval of the organization’s anti-homosexuality position.
On Wednesday, Spielberg was announced the winner of the Producers Guild’s Selznick Award, according to Reuters.
The award recognizes producers work, and Producers Guild Awards co-chairs said in a press release: “As one of the most prolific filmmakers of all time, Steven’s continued genius, imagination, and fearlessness in the world of feature film entertainment is unmatched in this industry.”
Co-Chairs Paula Wagner and Michael Manheim continued in the statement, “Steven has produced some of the most iconic films in the history of cinema and we have no doubt he will continue to bring adventures, emotionally moving storylines, thought-provoking characters and cult classics to audiences across the globe.”
