Terrence Malick Gives The Title ‘Lawless’ To John Hillcoat For The Movie Formerly Called ‘Wettest County’
A couple years agoJohn Hillcoat(The Road,The Proposition) stared the process of adaptingMatt Bondurant’s novelThe Wettest County in the World. The film starsTom Hardy,Shia LaBeouf,Jessica Chastainand many more in the story of a bootlegging family. The title was soonshorteneddown toThe Wettest County. But now, just a bit prior to the film’s August 31 opening, the movie has a new title:Lawless.
Trouble is,Lawlessis whatTerrence Malickhad been planning to call one of his two films he’s shooting this year withChristian Bale. The good news is, Hillcoat’s team asked for the name, and Malick graciously gave it up.
Word of the title change surfaced yesterday, when The Weinstein Company reflected the title on its website, as noticed byThe Playlist. But this isn’t an example of Harvey Weinstein strongarming his way to get the title. Producer Lucy Fisher toldEWthat they asked, and Malick gave:
We’d always wanted the title Lawless, but it was always unavailable to us. [But] Terry very graciously gave us the go-ahead to use it… Because, he said, he’s a fan of John’s. He gets a special thank you in the movie.
The Malick film is in pre-production, and is set to also featureRyan Gosling,Natalie Portman,Cate Blanchett, andRooney Mara. It is currently untitled.
This sort of thing has happened before. The most famous example I can think of happened when David Cronenberg was developing the film that becameDead Ringers. He was using the titleTwins, and right around the same time Ivan Reitman, who had produced some of Cronenberg’s early work, wanted to make a comedy calledTwinsstarring Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two worked out a deal, and the originalTwinsbecameDead Ringers— a much better name for the film.
