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March 8, 2002
Tina Sinatra to produce 'Manchurian' remake
By JAM! Movies
The 1962 John Frankenheimer-directed, Frank Sinatra-starring Cold War thriller is being produced by Tina Sinatra, Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures, Variety said. "Any Given Sunday" scribe Dan Pyne has been tapped to write the screenplay. Sinatra starred in the original, opposite Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey. Based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon, the film was a highly stylized mixture of action and satire, set against the backdrop of anti-Communist hysteria and real Cold War tension. Sinatra and Harvey portrayed Korean War vets who gradually discover they had been unwittingly captured by Soviet and Communist Chinese officials, brainwashed, and then released without any clear memory of their experience. Sinatra's character realizes Harvey's character had been trained as a sleeper assassin. The film was initially released to lukewarm business, but interest shot up after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sinatra reportedly felt some culpability. In 1972, he bought the rights to the film from United Artists and sat on it until 1988, when it was re-released. Tina Sinatra told Variety that her father blessed the remake before his death. ""He believed, as we do, that premises can be brought into the future." |
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