Joel Schumacher in ’The Crowded Room’

October 14, 2004 by Liam
Filed under: Movie News

Joel Schumacher in ’The Crowded Room’ Joel Schumacher will direct “The Crowded Room”, a true story of a man with 24 separate personalities based on the book “The Minds of Billy Milligan”.

The film has been through about as many permutations, with Schumacher nearly making it twice with Brad Pitt and once with Billy Crudup while the project was at New Regency.

It has been rescued from development hell by producer Alexandra Milchan, who worked on the project for a decade as a New Regency executive. She persuaded her father, Arnon Milchan, to let her take it independent.

Milchan and Schumacher have started the casting process to find a young actor to play a role. Shooting will begin in February.

Schumacher, who just directed “The Phantom of the Opera” for Warner Bros., said he never got the troubling story of Milligan out of his system. When timing didn’t work out for a January shoot of the Patricia Cornwell novel “Cruel and Unusual” for Columbia, Schumacher delayed that film to make the Milligan tale.

At 21, Milligan was arrested and charged with rape, and doctors discovered he had manifested a room full of distinct personalities that ranged from a young female child to a Serb-Croatian immigrant. His illness was attributed to a childhood full of violence and sexual abuse at the hands of his stepfather.