Despite speculation — and hope — that Sharon Stone might appear in the upcoming so-called “anti-woke” reboot of “Basic Instinct,” the actress didn’t appear particularly eager for the job this week in a new interview.
In fact, she appeared quite the opposite while speaking with NBC’s “Today,” giving anchor Craig Melvin her unvarnished take on the project. “If it goes the way the one that I was in went, I would just say, I don’t know why you do it,” she said when asked about it.
“I mean, go ahead, but good f—ing luck,” Stone added, laughing.
You can see the exchange in the clip below. “Basic Instinct” comes up at about the 3:00 mark.
As TheWrap exclusively reported July 17, Joe Eszterhas, who wrote the original groundbreaking 1992 film, has inked a $4 million deal to write the reboot for Amazon. The project comes via Scott Stuber’s United Artists banner and Amazon MGM Studios. The deal commits Amazon to pay the screenwriting legend $2 million against a potential $4 million total if the movie is made. Nick Nesbitt and Stuber are producing, along with Craig Baumgartern and Adam Griffin, who is executive producing, via their Vault Entertainment banner.
At the time of the announcement, the door was left open for Stone to return as serial killing femme fatale Catherine Tramell, an era-defining role that made Stone an international star. Speaking to TheWrap about the project a week after his deal was made public, Eszterhas explicitly said he hopes she’ll come back.
“The Catherine Trammel character I will write and I hope Sharon agrees to do the picture because I thought she was brilliant the first time out,” he said.
The reboot is expected to be “anti-woke,” a concept Eszterhas also elaborated on while speaking to TheWrap. “It means that dialogue-wise she will be open about her sexuality, character-wise she will be raunchy at times, funny, iconoclastic and all of those things,” he said.
He continued, “In terms of the woke culture, I think that there is a segment of the population that’s had it with woke culture. But then there’s also a huge segment that hasn’t. I don’t believe in woke and I don’t believe in being politically correct because I think it’s not the truth, and I like the truth spoken.”
