After a hiatus of almost a decade after Morvern Callar, Scottish auteur Ramsay was set to make Jane Got a Gun her follow-up to 2010's remarkable and unsettling We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Everything sounded good on the Brian Duffield-scripted project, which stars Portman as the wife of a dangerous outlaw betrayed by his criminal compatriots on one of his frequent outlaw adventures. He returns home bloodied and dying, warning his wife that his former posse is hot on his heels, leaving his wife to defend herself alone. In order to defend herself and her homestead, she seeks out a former lover to sling guns with her.
After enduring a casting kerfuffle along the way, Ramsay was set to begin production on Monday in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Except she didn't show up on the first day.
Deadline broke the story yesterday, reporting that Ramsay, exited Jane Got a Gun in most dramatic fashion. Details as to exactly what motivated this move are still unavailable and nobody has heard from Ramsay, who has a pay-or-play deal here, meaning she still gets paid whether she makes the movie or not.
Scott Steindorff, who is producing alongside Portman, Aleen Keshishian, and Terry Dougas, said, "I’m shocked and so disappointed someone would do this to 150 crew members who devoted so much time, energy, commitment and loyalty to a project, and then have the director not show up. It is insane somebody would do this to other people. I feel more for the crew and their families, but we are keeping the show going on, directors are flying in, and a replacement is imminent.”
Imminent indeed. With the cast killing time by rehearsing, producers quickly found a new director in Gavin O'Connor, best known as the writer and director of last year's Warrior. O'Connor, who recently directed the pilot episode of the FX series The Americans, will start shooting on the film as early as Thursday, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
He's already dealing with his first hiccup on Jane Got a Gun, though. Deadline has revealed that Jude Law is no longer playing the husband in the film, as he signed on to work with Ramsay in the first place. Law swooped in several weeks ago during the aforementioned casting kerfuffle. Michael Fassbender has been attached to play Jane's ex-lover, with Joel Edgerton as the husband, but scheduling on X-Men: Days of Future Past forced Fassbender to depart. So Edgerton was swapped into the ex-lover role, with Law taking over as the husband.
Now, Law's out too. So Jane Got a Gun gained a director but lost a star in short order. So far, the film has traveled a rocky landscape, but perhaps it will be a relatively smooth journey from here on out. Stay tuned to see.
