Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein Developing Rival Movies Based on Real-Life Kidnapping

Looks like there may be some bad blood between Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein.

A few months ago, Spielberg announced that he'll follow Ready Player One with a movie called The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, which Lincoln and Munich screenwriter Tony Kushner has adapted from David Kertzer's book. Here's the description, just to get you up to speed:

Bologna: nightfall, June 1858. A knock sounds at the door of the Jewish merchant Momolo Mortara. Two officers of the Inquisition bust inside and seize Mortara's six-year-old son, Edgardo. As the boy is wrenched from his father's arms, his mother collapses. The reason for his abduction: the boy had been secretly "baptized" by a family servant. According to papal law, the child is therefore a Catholic who can be taken from his family and delivered to a special monastery where his conversion will be completed. 

With this terrifying scene, prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer begins the true story of how one boy's kidnapping became a pivotal event in the collapse of the Vatican as a secular power. The book evokes the anguish of a modest merchant's family, the rhythms of daily life in a Jewish ghetto, and also explores, through the revolutionary campaigns of Mazzini and Garibaldi and such personages as Napoleon III, the emergence of Italy as a modern national state. Moving and informative, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara reads as both a historical thriller and an authoritative analysis of how a single human tragedy changed the course of history.

Weinstein had apparently been developing a film version for eight years when Spielberg decided to announce his own version. Despite the fact that Spielberg has already cast Mark Rylance and Oscar Isaac in his film, Weinstein refuses to let it go: THR reports that he's now in talks with Everest helmer Baltasar Kormakur to direct another take on the story and Robert De Niro is in talks to play the role of the Pope.

Well known for his scheming tactics, Weinstein is looking to get his version into production before Spielberg's, eying a production start in January 2017; Spielberg has to wait until spring of 2017 before he can get going on his movie. Ego is a big deal in Hollywood, so I doubt either of these guys is going to back down. That means we'll probably see both movies hit theaters next year, marking the latest and one of the strangest examples of two nearly-identical projects coming out within months of each other.