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Baz Luhrmann holds reading for 'Gatsby'
Tuesday, October 19 2010, 01:48 BST
By Tara Fowler


Rex Features
Baz Luhrmann held a reading to workshop his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it has been reported.

Luhrmann, who directed Moulin Rouge! and Australia, wrote his adaptation of the novel with his scriptwriting partner Craig Pierce.

According to Deadline, Luhrmann and Pierce had Leonardo DiCaprio read for the role of Gatsby, Tobey Maguire for Nick Carraway and Rebecca Hall for Daisy Buchanan.

The reading was reportedly successful, but given that it was simply a workshop, there is no assurance that DiCaprio, Maguire and Hall will be in the film.

Baz Luhrmann Workshops 'The Great Gatsby' In New York
By MIKE FLEMING | Monday October 18, 2010 @ 8:23pm


EXCLUSIVE: While Baz Luhrmann hasn't settled on whether he'll make The Great Gatsby his next film, he workshopped the adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel that he wrote with frequent collaborator Craig Pearce. I'm told that Leonardo DiCaprio read the role of Gatsby, Tobey Maguire read Nick Carraway, and that The Town star Rebecca Hall read the role of Daisy.

The picture is set up at Sony Pictures Entertainment and the reading went well, I'm told. Luhrmann workshops every script he's considering and there's no guarantee those actors will wind up starring in the film. Reports have mentioned Amanda Seyfried as a possible Daisy and I've heard Baz is sweet on Natalie Portman. Luhrmann and Catherine Martin are producing with Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher.

Baz Luhrmann and "The Great Gatsby
Posted by Moira Macdonald


Some books, it seems to me, have the kind of jewel-like perfection that can't be translated into another medium -- trying to make a movie from such a masterwork is like trying to put magic in a bottle. (I think this even though I'm often wrong -- "Mrs. Dalloway," "The Hours," and "Atonement" were just three of the books that I just knew couldn't possibly survive a translation to the screen -- and yet were adapted into exquisite movies that beautifully captured the books' spell.) But one of those books is F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," which I re-read every few years and am always newly struck by its timelessness, its brevity, its almost carelessly artful sentences in which you find beauty on every page, right up to its gorgeous final line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." A few filmmakers have taken a crack at "The Great Gatsby" over the years -- most recently a 2000 TV version starring Paul Rudd, Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino -- with the best-known attempt being the 1974 version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. I haven't seen any of them; due to mild stubbornness (how can they possibly live up to the book!) and reports that none have been stellar.

But if Baz Luhrmann goes through with his plans to make a new film version of "The Great Gatsby," I might just have to watch. (Who am I kidding; I'd definitely watch that, whether it works or not.) It's been known for a while that Luhrmann's had this project up his sleeve, and this week it was reported that he took a big step forward: a workshop reading of the screenplay (which Luhrmann wrote, with Craig Pearce), with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carroway, and Rebecca Hall as Daisy Buchanan, whose fabled voice "was full of money." Deadline, which reported on the workshop, cautions that these actors are not necessarily contracted or even intending to be in the film (for which the names of Amanda Seyfried and Natalie Portman have been mentioned as Daisy); nor is it clear whether this will be Luhrmann's next project. But it's intriguing, particularly DiCaprio as Gatsby. Now I want to go read the book again.

Anyone seen any of the other "Gatsby" versions? What did you think? Would you watch this one?

The only problem I see with a project like this is how on earth they would market it.