Al Pacino, the much-lauded stage and screen actor currently playing Shylock in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merchant of Venice, will soon add another award to his crowded mantle.

Tribeca's Oxford Shakespeare Company (OSC) has named Pacino the first recipient of its Oxford Prize "in honor of the actor's outstanding artistic achievements in bringing Shakespeare to the public," according to press notes.

The award, which will be presented to Pacino later this summer, also consists of a scholarship named in the recipient's honor, which is given to a promising actor at the OSC's theatre school, allowing the student to attend classes and production workshops at no cost. The Al Pacino Scholarship honoree is Frank Franconeri.

*source Playbill.com

Shakespeare in the Park's production of The Merchant of Venice will begin performances June 12 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, running in repertory with Winter's Tale.

-source, Playbill.com

Pacino said he was offered the chance to meet Kevorkian, but he turned it down. “I felt with Jack, the script was so complete in its portrait, and I had so much research,” he noted, also pointing out that the Kevorkian he plays in the film is a much younger man. But he seemed ambivalent now about that decision: “Why I didn’t take access to him is a question, and I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Three Hollywood legends — actually four if you count the publicist involved, the venerable Pat Kingsley — are working to bring Philip Roth’s most recent novel to the multiplex. Al Pacino has bought the movie rights to “The Humbling,” about an aging and irrelevant stage actor who finds hope of renewal through a younger woman. Mr. Pacino, who has never optioned a book before, will play the lead, according to Ms. Kingsley. In the director’s chair, she said, will be Barry Levinson, who won an Oscar for “Rain Man” and was nominated for “Bugsy.” (More recently, he has been producing television, including the gritty HBO prison series “Oz.”) Buck Henry, who just turned 79, is writing the screenplay, Ms. Kingsley said. Among Mr. Henry’s writing credits are “The Graduate,” the original “Get Smart” television series and to “To Die For,” which starred Nicole Kidman.

“The book is perfect for him” — Mr. Pacino — “because he has a love of the stage and, although he has never personally experienced these feelings, he understands them,” Ms. Kingsley said. No studio is involved yet. Although “The Humbling” received mixed critical notices, Mr. Roth has won pretty much every writing honor available (except the Nobel Prize), including the National Book Award — twice — and a Pulitzer Prize.

Al Pacino eyes starring role in "Blink"

Killer Films has resurrected "Betsy and the Emperor," the screen version of Staton Rabin's children's book previously set up at Warner Bros.' kids unit Storyopolis.  

Pic will be helmed by John Curran. It stars Al Pacino, who's been attached to the project since its original incarnation.  

Adi Cohen and Joseph Grinkorn's GC Corp. has acquired all film and stage adaptation rights and will finance; Killer Films produces.  

Brian Edgar will write the script, about a 14-year-old girl who meets Napoleon after his exile on the island of St. Helena. Book was published in 2004. 

French helmer Patrice Chereau had been set to direct the Storyopolis production in what would have been his first English-language movie.

In 2004 the film was being referred to as The Monster of Longwood an adaptation of a Staton Rabin’s novel “Betsy and the Emperor” about the French dictator’s last days and his relationship with a young British girl who befriended him after he was exiled to the isle of St. Helena.

By Variety article dated 2/4/09

Al Pacino and Michael Radford, who previously collaborated on a film version of Bill Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice", are teaming for a celluloid take on the Bard's "King Lear".

While Pacino has played many Shakespearean characters, he has never played King Lear, the aging monarch who selects his successor by parsing his kingdom in three parts, ruled by his trio of daughters. Two of them are scheming connivers who flatter their father, while the one loving daughter, Cordelia, refuses to play that game and is exiled. The king ultimately loses everything.

"King Lear" has been filmed several times with Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles and Paul Scofield among those in the title role, says Variety.

Radford will shoot the picture entirely in Europe, starting later this year. Pic is being financed out of the U.K. and Northern Ireland.

"Al has been offered this role many times over the years, but didn't feel ready," Navidi said. "He's ready now. The film will be true to its period, very similar to the classical look of 'Merchant of Venice.' Michael came up with the most brilliant adaptation and Al and I flipped for it."

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