Robert Kennedy on the campaign trail.
Variety says that Chris Columbus will direct a movie about Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Columbus’s company, 1492 Productions, has acquired Thurston Clark’s book The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America to adapt. Columbus will write the script himself or may call in a co-writer to keep it moving while he works on other commitments.
Kennedy’s idealistic platform captured the imagination of many Americans before his assassination in Los Angeles in June 1968. The assassionation was the subject of Bobby, Emilio Estevez’s disparate group of people crossing paths at a major event film.
Good luck to Columbus, who is better known for lighter fare such as the first two Harry Potter movies, the Home Alone movies and Mrs. Doubtfire. RFK’s campaign is certainly a worthy subject, but it’s exactly the type of thing that baby boomers can’ easily oversentimentalize and overromanticize. Hopefully they won’t just settle for the easy gauzy mawkish take and do something interesting or at least real instead. Someone can still be a hero and have flaws, you know.
