It was obvious The Great Gatsby had run into problems when it was announced that Warner Bros. was pushing the film from December to next summer, but the details surrounding those problems remained relatively unknown. Today, The Herald Sun reports that Baz Luhrmann needs more money to finish the film, and the studio isn’t paying.
That sounds much worse than we thought. The move originally seemed to be financial in the sense that Warner had written off the film as an award contender and simply wanted to capitalize on the big summer markets, but this new development could really spell trouble for The Great Gatsby.
Warner Bros. has already dropped $127 million on this film and Luhrmann has reportedly planned reshoots with major cast members including Tobey Maguire, but with Warner not being willing to dig deeper into their wallets, Luhrmann is stuck chasing investors to help get the film done.
This is really unfortunate news, I loved the original trailer for the film and was very excited to see it at Christmas. Now, not only do I have to wait until the summer, but this news means the film likely will fall well short of its potential, that is unless it can find some very wealthy and very committed investors.
Hopefully Luhrmann can throw a heck of a bake sale.