Target date elusive for 'Killshot'

HOLLYWOOD -- The "Killshot" collaboration certainly looked intriguing on paper: John Madden, director of best picture winner "Shakespeare in Love," adapting a colorful crime novel by Elmore Leonard, author of "Get Shorty" and "Out of Sight," with Quentin Tarantino serving as executive producer.

Add screenwriter Hossein Amini ("The Wings of the Dove") and uncredited revisions by Oscar winners Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, and what does "Killshot" add up to? The way the Weinstein Co. sees it, a mess it has tried -- and failed -- to unload.

"Killshot" is a drama featuring a couple (Diane Lane and Thomas Jane) in a witness protection program who are pursued by bad guys (Mickey Rourke and Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

But an equally compelling drama is unfolding around "Killshot," which was quietly pulled off November's theatrical release schedule -- again.

It's at least the fifth time the movie has been scheduled for release only to be pushed to a later date. As it now stands, "Killshot," which was filmed nearly three years ago, will probably not come out until early 2009, the Weinstein Co. said recently.

It's a startling outcome given the film's pedigree, but just another dose of bad news for the Weinstein Co., which has struggled at the box office and seen a half-dozen of the company's top executives leave or announce their departures in recent weeks.

The Weinstein Co. has tried to sell several of its movies, including "Killshot," to other distributors. This spring at Creative Artists Agency, "Killshot" was screened for potential distributors. And, as has happened at earlier sales screenings for "Killshot," there were no takers for the film's domestic rights.

The movie dates from the mid-1990s at Miramax Films, when brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein ran the company at the Walt Disney Co.

Well after completion of its original filming, "Killshot" went back for reshoots, with uncredited writing and other assistance from Minghella and Pollack, both of whom have since died.

"I think the movie is really strong," says "Killshot" producer Richard Gladstein.

"I'd love to see the movie come out, and I think audiences will like it."