The news seemed to come out of the blue a couple weeks ago when Tom Cruise and partner Paula Wagner re-launched United Artists, but the studio at least has hopes of getting a strong start. Its first pickup? The Robert Redford-directed Lions For Lambs, with Redford, Cruise, and Meryl Streep in the leads. Details from The Hollywood Reporter:
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom), the multilayered story stars Redford as a professor in the U.S. with two students in Afghanistan. Cruise will play a U.S. senator. "I'm the investigative reporter on (Cruise's) ass," confirmed Streep, who co-starred with Redford in Sydney Pollack's Oscar-winning 1985 epic "Out of Africa."
And if the new UA lives up to its age-old promise of giving artists creative control, Redford might be able to recover from that Will Smith caddy movie. Or just make more mistakes on his own and learn from them, or something like that.