Director Brett Ratner Plans to Get Dirty for Playboy

Of course 21st-century ladies man Brett Ratner would sign on to direct Playboy, a film about the life of Hugh Hefner for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment and Universal. From Variety:

Grazer optioned Hefner's life rights several years ago. The producer's "8 Mile" scribe Scott Silver tried it as a musical, and Oliver Stone developed several drafts. Making a film of Hefner's long life as icon of the sexual revolution has proven difficult, but Ratner and Hoffman found a way to do it that pleased Grazer and the 81-year-old Hefner, who approved the take late last week in a meeting at the Playboy Mansion.

Ratner, who completed "Rush Hour 3" for an Aug. 10 release through New Line and has a rep as a playboy himself, knows much about the mag's history, though his mansion visit was his first. When Grazer made his original deal with Hefner, Ratner sent the producer his Playboy pinball machine, which sits outside Grazer's office at Imagine.

Ratner says he wants to explore Hef's First Ammendment struggles, which hardly compare to what Hustler's Larry Flynt endured to protect his freedom of speech. Milos Forman did a decent job telling Flynt's story with 1997's The People Vs. Larry Flynt, but the film only earned around $20 million at the box office and was a little too hagiographic for my taste. But I can see why Universal might think that a Playboy story could have more mainstream appeal. Ratner has been working with Grazer on another movie, a caper pic (with Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock attached) in which a group of employees of Manhattan's Trump Tower's rob the rich residents. Both the Hef and Trump projects are still in the script stage, so Ratner will shoot whichever one is ready first.

[Caption: Brett Ratner, Kate Bosworth, Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo. Credit: Tony Barson/WireImage.com]