So this is kind of unprecedented news. Occasionally, a director will drop out of a film they’ve signed onto during production. But that’s usually in the earlier stages, before anything concrete happens. As far as I (and everyone else who’s written about this story, it seems) know, no director has ever left a film the day it’s supposed to start shooting.
But that’s exactly what Lynne Ramsay did yesterday. She was supposed to helm Jane Got Her Gun, a western starring Natalie Portman as a woman who must defend her farm from her husband’s vengeful former gang. The cast and crew got together to start filming… but there was no Ramsay. It was then that many of them, including Portman, first learned that they’d lost their director.
Who knows what presumably drastic drama has gone on behind the scenes here. This is sure to be a blow to Ramsay’s reputation in the business, no matter what her reasons for dropping out are. Ramsay, known for Movern Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin, just seemed to be in the swing of breaking a long absence from filmmaking. Who knows if she’ll remain attached to the sci-fi Moby Dick adaptation now. We’ll see how this story develops, but for know, I want to wait for Ramsay’s motivations come to light before making a judgment call against her.
