
	Col jingles 'Jester' pitch with eye on Love Hewitt

Release Date:

August 26, 1999

Press Release:

Variety

Love Spell to produce Kahn's romantic comedy with MERV GRIFFIN (yup, THE "MERV GRIFFIN"....Ooooooooooooo).....

by Claude Brodesser

Columbia Pictures has bought "Park Jester," a romantic comedy from pitchmeister Robert Kosberg ("Twelve Monkeys"). Pitch was purchased by the Sony arm for low- to mid-six-figures for Jenifer Love Hewitt's Love Spell Entertainment as a potential vehicle for Hewitt to topline.

Hewitt will co-produce with Kosberg and Love Spell veepee Jill Gilbert. Merv Griffin will exec produce.

"Jester" is being penned by scribe Jeffrey Kahn, who served as supervising producer for UPN's "Dilbert" and as head writer for MTV's "Austin Stories." Kosberg and Kahn had developed the idea based on a mutual time-travel fetish that was first expressed in "Monkeys."

Busy slate

In only its sixth month on the Sony lot, Love Spell is already developing its second picture for the studio, but the star of Fox's upcoming drama "Time of Your Life" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" said she won't be pigeonholed into solely making romantic comedies.

"While I am a huge fan of romantic stories, what interests me most is finding great stories that will appeal to men and women, regardless of genre," Hewitt explained.

Love Spell's first pic in development at Sony, "The Girl in the Curl," is a drama about a girl's return home to mourn the loss of her brother, only to become romantically involved with someone who was instrumental in his death.

"(Hewitt) is brilliant with story, and this is an excellent place to discover other people's ideas," Gilbert said.

Hewitt is repped by the William Morris Agency's Ames Cushing and by attorney Bob Wallerstein of Armstrong, Hirsch, Jackoway, Tyreman & Werthimer.