NEW YORK -- Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, Dina Merrill-Hartley, Bruce Greenwood, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gretchen Mol and Jennifer Tilly are set to star for director Alfonso Arau in "The Magnificent Ambersons," a four-hour miniseries remake of the 1942 Orson Welles film.

"Ambersons," which will be broadcast in the U.S. by A&E next year, is a co-production among A&E, the DeAngelis Group, RKO Pictures and Victory Media Group.

Pic begins shooting this week in Ireland.

RKO cut 40 minutes from Welles' original film, his follow-up to "Citizen Kane, after it tested poorly before an audience of teenagers. The footage was burned so Welles couldn't restore it. Mini, which is expected to clock in at 131 minutes, is using Welles' original script and will feature the excised scenes.

Story follows a family whose members arrogantly refuse to embrace the social changes going on around them, especially the advent of the automobile, and lose their fortune in the proess.

The film's being produced by Gene Kirkwood, Norman Stephens and Jonas Bauer, with John G. Phelan co-producing; Delia Fine, Guido DeAgnelis and RKO Pictures chairman Ted Hartley are exec producing.

--AP Wire Photo

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The Times
10/19/00

Hollywood diary
by Matt Wolf

CAN one improve upon greatness? That's the hope behind the remake of Orson Welles's magnificent 1942 film, The Magnificent Ambersons, which is currently shooting in Dublin with a distinctly starry cast. Welles's original, you may recall, was recut and reshot, not least by then-RKO president George Schaefer, but enough remains from the adaptation of the Booth Tarkington novel to ensure the film's place in the Welles canon. (That 1940's version marked Welles's follow-up to Citizen Kane).

This time around, Mexican director Alfonso Arau (Like Water For Chocolate) has returned to the initial 131-page shooting script in order to reinstate the missing scenes, with a distinctly 21st-century cast inheriting the roles first played by, among others, Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter and Agnes Moorehead. Madeleine Stowe and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers play mother and son, with Gretchen Mol, Jennifer Tilly and Bruce Greenwood in supporting roles. Continuing his Welles association, the Amberson paterfamilias is played by James Cromwell (the man from Babe), who last year played mogul -- and noted Welles nemesis -- William Randolph Hearst in the television film RKO 281, about the making of, yes, Citizen Kane.