Gyllenhaal’s Broadway Plans On Hold
In mid-August, the New York Post’s Michael Riedel reported that Jake Gyllenhaal (pictured here shot by Mark Seliger for the October issue of Interview) would be coming to Broadway in 2008 in a comedy by Beau Willimon called “Farragut North.” The article said that Mike Nichols would direct. Lemonwade has learned that Nichols will not be directing the play. For now, the production — with Gyllenhaal or anyone else — is on hold. And with Gyllenhaal’s film schedule filling up (he has just signed on to star in a love-triangle movie called “Brothers,” with Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman), I don’t see him on Broadway anytime soon.
Gyllenhaal had done a reading of “Farragut North,” directed by James Lapine, and the play had been on the 2007-2008 schedule of New York’s Second Stage theater. The piece is a dark comedy about a hot-shot press secretary for a Presidential contender as caucuses commence in Iowa. Nichols, who is putting the finishing touches on his end-of-year movie release, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” will be back on Broadway in the spring, directing Odets’ “The Country Girl,” starring Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher.