'Taking Woodstock' in development as next film for Oscar-winning director Ang Lee

I just received the following press release.

‘Taking Woodstock’ in Development as Next Film For Oscar-Winning Director Ang Lee

NEW YORK, April 17, 2008 – Focus Features is developing the 1969-set true story Taking Woodstock as the next project for Academy Award winner Ang Lee to direct. Focus Features CEO James Schamus confirmed the comedy’s active development today.

Mr. Schamus is writing the screenplay, which is an adaptation of Elliot Tiber’s memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, A Concert, and A Life. The book, published last year by Square One Publishers, was written by Mr. Tiber with Tom Monte.

Mr. Tiber played an unexpected but pivotal role in making the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the famed happening it was. Working as an interior designer in Greenwich Village during culturally and politically exciting times, Mr. Tiber felt empowered by the gay-rights movement. But he was also still staked to the family business – a Catskills motel. As its part-time manager, he had become the local town’s issuer of event permits, granting himself one annually for a small music festival. When he heard that the planned Woodstock concert had had its own permit denied by a neighboring town, he called to offer his own. Soon half a million people were on their way to Mr. Tiber’s neighbor’s farm in White Lake, New York, and Mr. Tiber found himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.

Mr. Schamus commented, “Elliot’s exuberant and heartfelt story is a perfect window onto the Woodstock experience, exploring an inspiring historical moment when liberation and freedom were in the air.”

Mr. Tiber has written and produced numerous award-winning plays and musical comedies for the theater, television, and film. As a professor of comedy writing and performance, he has taught at the New School University and Hunter College in New York City. His first novel Rue Haute, was an instant bestseller in Europe, and was published in the U.S. under the title High Street.

Mr. Monte has written more than thirty books and hundreds of articles for such publications as Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and The Chicago Tribune. Among his many works are The Way of Hope, about the AIDS crisis in New York City; and Recalled by Life, which he co-authored with Dr. Anthony Sattilaro.

Taiwan-born Ang Lee is one of the world’s most revered and honored film directors. He was won 2 Academy Awards (in 2006, for his Direction of Brokeback Mountain, and in 2001, for Best Foreign-Language Film for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). His films have twice won the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best Picture at the Venice International Film Festival (in 2007, for Lust, Caution, and in 2005, for Brokeback Mountain) and twice won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival (in 1993, for The Wedding Banquet and in 1996, for Sense and Sensibility). Mr. Lee’s most recent film, Lust, Caution, swept Asia’s Golden Horse Awards this year, with 8 wins including Best Film; it is one of the highest-grossing and most critically acclaimed films in the history of Chinese-language cinema.

Mr. Schamus has had a long collaboration as writer and producer with Mr. Lee on ten feature films. Brokeback Mountain won 3 Academy Awards and is Focus’ all-time top-grosser, with global ticket sales of over $180 million. Messrs. Lee and Schamus’ earlier films together include The Hulk; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won 4 Academy Awards (and for which Mr. Schamus received nominations in the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Song categories); Ride with the Devil; The Ice Storm (which earned Mr. Schamus WGA and BAFTA Award nominations in addition to the 1997 Cannes International Film Festival prize for Best Screenplay); Sense and Sensibility; Eat Drink Man Woman; The Wedding Banquet; and Pushing Hands. The duo most recently reteamed on Focus’ Lust, Caution, which Mr. Schamus co-wrote and produced.

Focus Features (www.filminfocus.com ) is a motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company committed to bringing moviegoers the most original stories from the world’s most innovative filmmakers.

Current and upcoming Focus Features releases include Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes, which world-premiered as the Opening-Night film of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams; Andrew Fleming’s irreverent comedy Hamlet 2, starring Steve Coogan; Shane Acker’s animated fantasy epic 9, starring Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly; Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated feature Coraline, starring Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher; Cary Fukunaga’s immigrant thriller Sin Nombre; Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading, starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and Brad Pitt; writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s new film, tentatively titled The Limits of Control, starring Isaach De Bankolé; Gus Van Sant’s Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk; and a contemporary comedy to be directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes.

Focus Features is part of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and 20% owned by Vivendi.