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Pulitzer and Tony Award winning playwright John Patrick Stanley has teamed up with Miramax and producer Scott Rubin to bring the Catholic school drama Doubt to the big screen. Stanley will pen and helm the 2007 project, which is set to lens in the fall in Gotham. The project started as an Off-Broadway 4-man show before moving on to the main strip and garnering four Tony’s and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play completed its run last summer after more than 500 perfs.
The pic will center on a Catholic school whose monsignor is confronted by a nun after she suspects him of abusing a black student of the school. The priest denies the charge, and much of the plays rapid pace dialogue focused on themes of authority, morality and religion. While the play was centered solely within the confines of the school, and did not employ a thesp for the part of the abused student, Stanley plans to cast the role, along with several other students; as well as film outside the school to elongate the storyline and provide further depth to the story. The project marks the second venture for Rubin and Miramax since Daniel Battsek took the lead at the studio. The first collaboration of the two was the recent hit The Queen which garnered $25 million in its first 10 weeks out, as well as 4 Globe nods on Thursday, including Best Picture-Drama.
Shanley’s former projects include Moonstruck which he scribed, and Joe vs. the Volcano which he both penned and directed. The director, in an interview with Variety, described the play as dealing with how “many of us feel overwhelmed by the complexity of modern life,” nonetheless views “Doubt” as a period pic of sorts. “The world of these nuns is very recent and yet utterly gone,” he said. “The way they eat, they way they live. It’s very exotic.” The Vatican, historically denouncing any production that paints the Church in a negative light, has been mysteriously quiet about both the play and the upcoming film. Records of official Vatican correspondence indicate no stance on either project, and attempts to contact the Vatican press office were unsuccessful as of press time. No casting has yet been announced for the film, though reports indicate that the process will begin in earnest following the New Year.
