Paul Dano is attached to play a young Karl Rove in Richard Linklater’s College Republicans.
The script by Wes Jones placed high on the 2010 Black List of outstanding but unproduced screenplays currently circulating Hollywood and details the early careers of Rove and Lee Atwater, two Republican operatives who would pioneer the field of “dirty tricks” in political campaigns. The screenplay covers their meeting in 1973 when Rove was making a run for national president of the College Republicans.
The film is being produced by Maya Browne and Ginger Sledge through Browne’s Bratt Entertainment.
Atwater and Rove have carved themselves a legacy for having engineered political campaigns that used tactics that could be considered legally and ethically questionable. Atwater ultimately rose to become chairman of the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for President George Herbert Walker Bush. Rove would manage George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. By becoming a key advisor to the president during his eight years in office, he earned the nickname “Bush’s Brain.”
In 1990, after being diagnosed with brain cancer, Atwater converted to Catholicism and sent apologizes to many of the politicians he felt he wronged with his tactics over the years.
Rove has previously been depicted on film by Toby Jones in Oliver Stone’s W.
College Republicans is currently set for a November start date in Austin, Texas and with a little bit of hustle could be ready to premier by the time the 2012 Presidential Election reaches its zenith a year later. This is, of course, providing that the film can find a distribution deal.
Interestingly, Rove has made news recently by stating that some in the current field of Republican Presidential candidates might be playing too much to the fringe elements of the GOP.
Via The Wrap.
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Thanks for the helpful post! I would never have discovered this on my own!