Kevin Costner: Princess Diana Was in Talks for Bodyguard 2

[minx]

Us Weekly

Kevin Costner helped give Whitney Houston her big screen break with 1992's The Bodyguard, and had high hopes of making a film star out of another well-known beauty: Princess Diana.

"Diana and I had been talking about doing Bodyguard 2," Costner, 57, tells Anderson Cooper in an interview airing on Anderson in May to promote Costner's History Channel miniseries Hatfields & McCoys. "I told her I would take care of her just the same way that I took care of Whitney."

Producing and starring in the original flick that garnered the late Houston critical acclaim, Costner was willing to craft a role especially for the Princess of Wales in the follow-up.

"She wanted me to write it for her. I said 'I'll tailor it for you if you're interested.' She goes, 'I am interested,'" Costner recounted to Cooper.

In a 2003 interview, the actor told ABC that the film's sequel would feature his character shielding the People's Princess from paparazzi and stalkers before the duo became involved in a torrid affair.

In an ironic twist, the actor -- who delivered the eulogy at Houston's February funeral -- received a draft of the script for Bodyguard 2 on August 31, 1997 -- the day before Diana perished in a Paris car crash at age 36.


Can't imagine this would have happened had she lived.

[SnarkyOracle!]

Poor Costner. Tertiary syphillis can ruin a mind.

[Garrison]

Costner, you fat lying son of a bitch

Though she couldn't have been any worse as an actor than he is

[Daniel Avery]

How tacky for him to even bring this up after all this time. Is his career that far down the toilet?

[alexis]

That has been floating around on the internet for years though. I thought it was just a crazy fan thing. But if he's actually saying it now. Scary.

[Mickey Fairgate]

This was actually mentioned in the book, "The Day Diana Died", which was published in 1998, written by Christopher Andersen.

According to the book, Costner actually received the second draft script on Aug. 29th, 1997, 3 days before Diana's death,
and did not pick the script up until the day after her death.

"I picked it up, and the first thirty pages were totally her", Costner said. "It was dignified, sexy, smart, funny--and I couldn't
finish. I stopped. It broke my heart"

So this has been around for about 14 years or so.....I'll print the total excerpt, if anyone wants.

[SnarkyOracle!]

Oh, I don't doubt there was a script. And even poor Diana may have said she was interested, with or without sincerity.

But it would never have happened.

Ron and Nancy wanted, quite naively, to go back into acting after he left office in 1989, even citing DYNASTY as an example of older stars' viability. But their handlers stopped them.

[MrsSuperman93]

Wow... never knew this!
But I don't think it would have been quite as popular as the original.

[Swami]

Is that about ten days too late?

Swami

[Tessie]

Never would have happened. I'd rather hear about the Hatfields & McCoys.

[Garrison]

she would have received a stern dressing down by the the government after the news had leaked in the tabloids and would have pulled out and denied it ever happened

[SnarkyOracle!]

Obviously, it's why they killed her.

[minx]

I thought that creepy hotel massage story from a few years ago would have driven Kevin Costner into early retirement. I hadn't heard anything about him until he started talking about Diana's interest in doing THE BODYGUARD 2 with him. Now my internet entertainment news sources can't seem to get enough of him. Today--as he promotes his band and his new miniseries--he claims to have once been on the brink of death. True or not, his stories, and the women in them, seem larger than life.

Kevin Costner says he 'came within a whisper of dying' at Alberta stage collapse

By Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - Two-time Oscar-winning star Kevin Costner says being in the middle of a deadly storm at an Alberta music festival nearly three years ago taught him "that life is precious."

Costner and his rock-country group Modern West were about to perform at the outdoor show in Camrose, Alta., in August 2009 when severe winds collapsed the main stage, killing one woman and injuring 75 other festival-goers.

"I came within a whisper of dying and two of my bandmates did too," Costner said during a stop in Toronto Thursday to announce that he and his band will play at the inaugural Boots and Hearts Music Festival in Bowmanville, Ont., in August.

"The stage fell on me, it fell on them, and I was underneath it."

Costner returned to Camrose with Modern West the following year to perform at the same concert, the Big Valley Jamboree.

He and his band haven't faced any similar scares at outdoor festivals since, but "when I tell the guys to get off the stage now, they get off," Costner said by phone moments after stepping off a plane in Toronto.

"It shows you how precious and how quickly life can be in the balance," noted the actor-filmmaker-singer, who won Oscars for best director and best picture for 1990's "Dances with Wolves."

"I like to think of myself as someone that has pretty high survival instincts, whether I'm in a stadium or in a bar or in the street, and this natural phenomena dominated everybody so quickly. There was a loss of life, there were some injuries that have been probably impossible to recover from, and it was stronger and it just out-ran everybody."

The country-themed Boots and Hearts Music Festival will be held on two stages at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville from Aug. 10 to Aug. 12.

Other acts on the bill include Tim McGraw, Kid Rock, Carrie Underwood, Alabama, Paul Brandt, and Big and Rich.

Organizers say the event will be the largest international country music festival ever hosted on Canadian soil.

Costner was slated to attend a launch party for the festival Thursday night and then head with Modern West to Windsor, Ont., for a concert on Friday.

Though his time in Toronto was brief, the "Field of Dreams" star was well aware of the dynasty of the city's Blue Jays baseball team.

"You guys are beating up on the Red Sox, are ya? A bunch of bullies, huh?" Costner laughed in jest, in reference to the Jays' 3-1 victory over Boston Wednesday.

Costner and Modern West are about to release their fourth album, "Famous For Killing Each Other," a concept disc inspired by his miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys" that's due to air next month on History Channel in the U.S.

The group is also scheduled to perform in Regina on June 30 and Grande Prairie, Alta., on July 1.

"I have been treated really well by everybody here and there's a genuineness, and so it's made it easy for me to want to come here," said Costner, who has performed around Canada with his band and made several films here, including the Alberta-shot "Open Range."

[Daniel Avery]

I thought that creepy hotel massage story from a few years ago would have driven Kevin Costner into early retirement. I hadn't heard anything about him until he started talking about Diana's interest in doing THE BODYGUARD 2 with him. Now my internet entertainment news sources can't seem to get enough of him. Today--as he promotes his band and his new miniseries--he claims to have once been on the brink of death. True or not, his stories, and the women in them, seem larger than life.

My guess? He hired himself a new publicist, who is coming up with all these things in an attempt to make him relevant again.

[Englishboy]

I was reading about this in the press yesterday.

I think it would have made a great movie if true.

The Bodyguard was a good film IMO

[alex]

I was reading about this in the press yesterday.

I think it would have made a great movie if true.

The Bodyguard was a good film IMO

Wonderful film, but it was trashy.

I can see the nutjobs coming out of the woodwork now to claim Diana's death was all some ploy buy the Queen To stop her starring in a bodyguard sequel.

[willie oleson]

Do you think she would have looked like an older version of Catherine Oxenberg? Hm?

[minx]

The Hollywood Reporter

With History feeling the urge of pretty much every other cable channel -- to get into the scripted business -- it makes sense it would choose historical fiction. However, the six-hour miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, starring Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, is not, creatively speaking, the greatest start History could have hoped for.

The network, once famous for Hitler documentaries and now for such unscripted hits as Ice Road Truckers and Pawn Stars, already has greenlighted its first scripted series, Vikings, from Michael Hirst (The Tudors, Elizabeth), set for 2013. So Hatfield & McCoys, the first scripted miniseries, can be seen as a trial run.

Here’s the first problem: Revenge dramas are inherently flawed. You killed one of mine, so I kill one of yours. Is there drama in there? A bit -- waiting for the gun to go off yet again as the sides tally the score. But, dramatically, you know what’s going to happen here: An eye is going to be taken for an eye until the whole South goes blind.

This is amplified tenfold with an adaptation of the real-life battle between the Hatfield and McCoy families, of West Virginia and Kentucky, respectively. The feud began in the late 1800s, and there’s much debate about who started it. Not that we want to side with either clan in the History version; both are pretty damn unlikable.

We meet Devil Anse Hatfield (Costner) and Randall McCoy (Paxton) fighting together and fleeing Union soldiers during the Civil War. The South is reeling, and despite fierce fighting from Hatfield, who leads his brigade, and McCoy, who is willing to die until the end, it looks like fate is against them. Then, without enough reason given, Hatfield quits and heads home. McCoy stays and as the last survivor of his brigade is captured and put into a Union prison. Upon his return home, he’s a little miffed to see that Hatfield is doing just fine in the timber business. There are no bygones here.

But then events go astray. It’s not clear if the families had issues before the war, but they seem to have a whole lot of them out of the blue when the fighting is over. Conveniently, the Hatfields and McCoys always seem to be at some event where alcohol and guns are involved and, well, one thing always leads to another. This, underwhelmingly, is where the miniseries decides to keep at it. Issue after issue comes up. Family members die, retaliation comes, and both families spit out the names of the other in every conversation.

Then a pig gets stolen (allegedly) and the six Hatfields on one side of the jury battle the six McCoys on the other, until one McCoy who is married to a Hatfield makes the wrong choice and -- look out -- more bloodshed. You may think that story about the pig is a fabrication of events to illustrate the mundane warring of the families, but no.

It’s pretty difficult to feel sorry for either side, since each episode appears to be dumb/drunk hillbillies doing something bad to the other side. Even when Hatfields & McCoys sets up a scenario in which the viewer can get emotionally invested (despite seeing it coming a mile away), like the love affair, marriage proposal and baby out of wedlock between a Hatfield and a McCoy, the investment is lost when both sides do something stupid.

Are we supposed to care for these people? Are we supposed to pick a side? It ain’t easy. There are times when Costner gives a terrific performance and you think, “Well, there it is, he’s our hero.” Then he does something despicable. Paxton then rises up and does something righteous, only to go dumb immediately afterward.

That is to say, no matter how hard each actor works to present the Hatfield or the McCoy side, it’s a moot point. Neither family gets sympathy or respect. And maybe that’s considered a badge of honor at History -- as if it has presented two antiheroes so effectively that the edginess of the effort cuts you to the bone.

Except it doesn’t. Hatfields & McCoys is less dark and dramatically difficult than it is pointlessly trying to tell each side of the story and ultimately making the case for neither. Hatfield vs. McCoy vs. Hatfield vs. McCoy vs. Hatfield vs. McCoy ad nauseam isn’t dramatic. It’s tedious. Somewhere around the three-hour mark, all you want to do is have both families line up opposite each other, pull the trigger and fade to black.


Sounds awful. For once, I'd rather watch Pawn Stars.

[Benny JR]

This would have been rubbish, I thought the first film sucked, and I'm sure this one would have, too. Can you imagine Kevin Costner and Princess Diana in a love embrace?

[CarlD]

Costner, you fat lying son of a bitch

Though she couldn't have been any worse as an actor than he is

True, he waited until NOW to tell us this ??