"Killshot" is a drama featuring a couple (Lane and Thomas Jane) in a witness protection program being pursued by a couple of bad guys (Rourke and Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
The movie dates to the mid-1990s at Miramax Films, when brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein ran the division of the Walt Disney Co. One early incarnation had Tony Scott ("Man on Fire") directing Robert De Niro and Tarantino as the bad guys, with Bruce Willis and Uma Thurman as the married couple.
The film was later assigned to Madden, who won Miramax the best picture Oscar with 1998's "Shakespeare in Love," which upset "Saving Private Ryan" for the top Academy Award.
When the Weinsteins left Miramax in 2005, they brought with them to their new Weinstein Co. several movie projects, including "Killshot."
At that year's Cannes Film Festival, a potential cast for the film -- then including Rourke and Lane -- was revealed.
Director Madden, who also directed "Proof" and "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," met with distributors. By October 2005, production was underway in Toronto, and the Weinstein Co. announced that "Killshot" would arrive in March 2006.
It never did.
As part of its distribution deal with MGM, the Weinstein Co. scheduled the film for release in September 2006, then October 2006, then a date to be determined in 2006 before it removed "Killshot" from the schedule entirely. "Killshot" reappeared on the MGM schedule late this summer with a Nov. 7 premiere, and then that date too was scrapped.
Last week, the Weinstein Co. and MGM terminated their alliance three months before it was scheduled to end. MGM will still release two Weinstein Co. films -- "Soul Men" and "Hurricane Season" -- later this year, with the Weinstein Co. now taking back all of the other titles that had been penciled into MGM's slate, including "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" and "The Road."
At some point well after completion of its original filming, "Killshot" went back for reshoots, with uncredited writing and other assistance from Minghella and Pollack, both of whom have since died.
People who have worked on the film hope that "Killshot" might ultimately mimic the performance of "Hero." Miramax acquired that Chinese action movie soon after it premiered in Asia in 2002, but the film sat on the shelf until August 2004.
"Hero" was greeted with fantastic reviews and grossed more than $53 million.
Steve Bunnell, the distribution chief for the Weinstein Co., says the studio hopes the critical accolades for Rourke's "The Wrestler," which Fox Searchlight is releasing Dec. 19, may help "Killshot." "Mickey Rourke is really good in the film," Bunnell says of "Killshot."
"I think the movie is really strong," adds "Killshot's" producer, Richard Gladstein. "I'd love to see the movie come out, and I think audiences will like it. John Madden is an incredible director."--
john.horn@latimes.com
