New York, July 16: Plans for a high-spirited, racetrack heist film starring super-couple Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas have collapsed, director Stephen Frears said on Tuesday. "Monkeyface," a thriller set in Miami, had been scheduled to begin shooting in later this year.
"It collapsed on Friday," Frears told Reuters during an interview. "They couldn't do a deal."
"Whatever the deal was to get Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, they couldn't get it to work," the British director added. "Everybody wanted to make it but somehow they couldn't lock it into place."
Representatives of Zeta-Jones and Douglas, who married in 2000, were not immediately available for comment.
Frears, whose film, "Dirty Pretty Things," has its U.S. opening on Friday, said he had been looking forward to "Monkeyface," and the chance to work again with Zeta-Jones, who acted in his 2000 film "High Fidelity."
"I had thought this is going to be tremendous fun, this is going to be like a holiday," he said, adding he believed they were equally enthused after talking about the project with them in January.
"I thought it was going to be a nice little treat, something to look forward to." he said. "So this is sad."
Bureau Report