Ready for Morgan Freeman and Halle Berry in a tale of what its director describes as “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest meets K-Pax”? Yes, sounds odd to us, too.
But that isn’t stopping Jean-Claude La Marre, who plans exactly that for his next film, The Patient.
The French filmmaker – best known for playing Shenge in Basquiat – is already at work on Colour Of The Cross, which he’s writing, directing and taking the role of Jesus Christ in. But The Patient is a little more light-hearted. Back to La Marre: “Freeman plays a mental patient at a Harlem hospital psychiatric ward who believes himself to be Santa Claus. And Halle Berry plays the psychiatrist who's evaluating him." Shades of Miracle On 34th Street also, then…
According to La Marre, Freeman’s character is able to escape the hospital and when he turns up at a Toys ‘R’ Us, this apparently starts to convince Berry’s psychiatrist that he might be telling the truth. Either that, or he just really likes toys. The film will kick off shooting in the summer for a planned 2007 Xmas release.
