Scorsese and Spielberg Team Up, Stone Does Caesar

Sept. 20 -- At last, a project so big, so vast, that it needed two super-director-producers to bring it to fruition.

No, we're not talking about the Indiana Jones duo of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but a trickier marriage of art and commerce.

Variety reports that mob chronicler Martin Scorsese and Oscared moneymaker Steven Spielberg are together at last: two director tastes that, we hope, will go well together. (But which one is the chocolate and which the peanut butter is for you to decide.)

The project is Into the Setting Sun, an all-American epic about the birth and construction of the first transcontinental railroad. Scorsese, who’s currently shooting another period epic, Gangs of New York, will helm the yet-to-be-scripted tale, while Spielberg will produce through DreamWorks.

As it has in the past, DreamWorks will share financing with another studio, in this case, Warner Bros.

The two well-known directors have tag-teamed on projects in the past, with Spielberg developing Cape Fear before Scorsese took it over (it remains his highest-grossing film), and Scorsese once being attached to Schindler’s List, which won a Best Director Oscar for Spielberg.

Spielberg is currently shooting A.I. and may follow it up (finally) with the much-delayed Minority Report. Scorsese is also eyeing Gucci, about the Italian fashion house.

Stone’s Latest Political ControversyAnother name-above-the-title director, Oliver Stone, is in negotiations to develop and direct Universal Pictures’ thriller American Caesar, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

If you’re thinking it will be another Gladiator, well, you’re wrong and right.

There’ll be no battles with tigers or mace-wielding warriors, but the hero of the piece is a former war hero who must act when he discovers corruption in high places. And while there’ll be no men in skirts this time around either, Douglas Wick and William Nicholson, who served as producer and screenwriter, respectively, on Gladiator, are doing the same for Caesar.