USA Today featured a piece on Robert Redford’s upcoming The Conspirator (pics then posted to ROS). Anthony Breznican’s piece says the film “follows the race to hunt down the small band of Confederate sympathizers who helped plot the attack.”
“There was a question of whether she was complicit, guilty by association, or even more guilty,” says Redford, who directs but doesn’t star in the movie. “The lawyer that defended her didn’t want to defend her. He was a Union soldier who became a lawyer.” His contempt for the suspect gives way to a fear that she is being prosecuted solely to bring her fugitive son out of hiding.
The Conspirator is independently financed and doesn’t yet have a distributor. It’s the first project made by the American Film Co., which plans to create historical dramas.
Redford says he didn’t want to simply re-create Lincoln’s assassination and deals with that mainly as setup. “All the President’s Men was very similar, because you had this big historical event taking place, but what people didn’t know was what these two reporters did, digging in under the radar. You didn’t need to show Nixon a lot,” he says. Redford starred in that 1976 film about the fall of President Nixon.
Pics at USA Today. We have a sampling after the cut.