Is Edward Zwick going the Jason Reitman route? Perhaps for his latest project he is. After a trio of costly studio projects in The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond and Defiance, Zwick seems poised to take on the pharma industry with a possible side-dish of romance (something we might not have seen from him since After Last Night… . Earlier in the week we mentioned that Jake Gyllenhaal and the very busy Anne Hathaway were re-teaming on Love & Other Drugs and now the identity of the helmer and scribe Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale, The Interpreter) have been revealed.
Production Weekly reports that lensing will begin in September (probably in some major, tax incentive U.S city or north of the border), this is based on the novel “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Saleman”, this would see Gyllenhaal play Jamie Reidy who is to the pharmaceutical business what Jerry Maguire was to professional sports and Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can) was to bank fraud. He’s the guy who’s been there, commands a big salary and walked away with the insider stories. The book description goes onto say that it reveals the questionable practices of drug reps, nurses, and even physicians. Reidy traces his ups and downs as a rep for giant drug manufacturer Pfizer, maker of some of the most widely prescribed and used drugs in existence, including Viagra.
