'News' break: Travolta is 'Earth'-bound

Premiere, Jan 1999 by Anita M Busch

Star is hot to play a tall alien in film of L. Ron Hubbard s sci-fi novel

SOMEWHERE, L. RON Hubbard must be smiling. John Travolta, one of the most famous Hollywood followers of the late founder of Scientology, has just rearranged his movie-- project dance card to put the film version of Hubbard's 1982 sci-fi novel, Battlefield Earth, front and center. Travolta has long wanted to play Terl, one of the ruthless aliens who rule over an Earth on which human slaves toil in underground mines; in the story's climax, Terl faces off against the rebel human Jonnie Goodboy Tyler for control of the planet. Travolta, a producer on the project, still needs to find a backer (Twentieth Century Fox dropped it in favor of James Cameron's remake of Planet of the Apes). Travolta's free to make Battlefield Earth happen now that The Shipping News, in which he was to star opposite his wife, Kelly Preston, is in limbo. Based on E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a New York widower who moves to Newfoundland with his aunt and two daughters to take a job at a local newspaper, The Shipping News had been set to shoot this past fall, with director Fred Schepisi (Roxanne, I.Q.). But Schepisi and Columbia Pictures differed on everything from the location and budget to the story line. Columbia executives and Travolta wanted to shoot the picture in Maine; Schepisi preferred Newfoundland. But taking an American crew to Canada would have added more than $1 million to the $50 million budget. And the studio asked for changes in the screenplay, which was written by Laura Jones (The Portrait of a Lady). "They disagreed over the love story," says one source with knowledge of the dispute. "The studio wanted more humor; Fred wanted an art film." By September it was clear that Schepisi was shipping out. "Ultimately, the studio didn't want to do the book," Schepisi says. "They wanted a conventional romantic comedy." "We love the book," protests Columbia Pictures president Amy Pascal, who is expected to give the rewrite to the ubiquitous Ron Bass (My Best Friend's Wedding) as soon as he delivers Steven Spielberg's Memoirs of a Geisha. "We're behind Shipping News, and we're going to make the movie with Travolta. We're just looking for another director." Jonathan Krane, Travolta's manager and a producer of The Shipping News, says he doesn't want to "rush the process. It's a brilliant book, and we want to make sure the script is right."

Travolta is also committed to The Shipping News, because he owes Sony another picture after having walked off the set of Roman Polanski's The Double. Although Sony initially wanted Travolta to star in an action or sci-fi film, he handpicked The Shipping News. And now that it has been pushed back to a September '99 start, Travolta hopes his pet Hubbard project will spark studio interest. It would mark a first for the Church of Scientology: Although Hubbard worked as a screenwriter and script consultant in the late 1930s, none of his novels has yet made it to the big screen. Still, Battlefield Earth-which sources estimate could cost $80 million-might be a tough sell. "It's big-budget," notes one studio executive, "and Travolta wants to dress up as a twelve-foot alien." -ANITA M. BUSCH

It's Alive: Hubbard's 1982 sci-fi novel Battlefield Earth has sold more than 4 million copies in 12