On Monday, Deadline.com reported that Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim was in talks to direct Paramount's 3D Justin Bieber biopic, but today the website says that the studio's negotiations with the director of "An Inconvenient Truth" have fallen apart and Guggenheim won't direct the project after all.
No other news outlets confirmed or debunked the story, and messages left by TheWrap for Paramount were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Deadline's latest story suggests that Guggenheim changed his mind after deciding that he'll be too busy promoting his upcoming documentary "Waiting for Superman." It's a specious notion at best, given that the movie's release date hasn't changed — and surely Guggenheim must have known that he'd be busy doing press for a project he's been working on for years.
Deadline also speculates that Guggenheim may have come under fire from his documentary peers.
It's also possible that Guggenheim got scared off by the somewhat snarky media coverage (including Deal Central's), much of which wondered why an acclaimed filmmaker would make a completely unnecessary 3D biopic of a 16-year-old flavor-of-the-month pop star.
Paramount will now search for a "replacement" director for the Bieber biopic, as the future blockbuster will have to start production soon in order to make its scheduled release date of Feb. 11, 2011.
