Development
In 1994 director Tony Scott was sent an article from the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday by his business manager Neville Shulman. The article, written by Sacha Gervasi and titled My gun for hire: Why a movie star's rebel daughter turned into a bounty hunter, was about an English woman named Domino Harvey who was working as a bounty hunter, apprehending fugitives who had skipped bail for the Celes King Bail Bond agency in South Central Los Angeles. While Harvey was one of the few female bounty hunters, what caught the attention of Shulman and Scott was that she was the daughter of the late actor Laurence Harvey.
Tony Scott tracked Domino to Beverly Hills, where she was living at the time with her mother Paulene Stone and Stone's then husband Peter Morton. He invited Domino to his office, where he proposed a film of her life. Domino agreed and sold Scott the film rights. According to the Los Angeles Times, Harvey was paid $360,000 for the rights. Tony Scott interviewed Harvey about her life and her work bounty hunting. Scott also met and interviewed Ed Martinez and Choco, who were Domino's bounty hunting colleagues. She took him to meet Celes King III, the bail bondsman they worked for.
20th Century Fox, which had a first refusal deal on the project, turned it down and in the end the film was financed by New Line Cinema.
Steve Barancik wrote the first draft of the screenplay, in 1997 which Scott rejected. A second script was written by Roger Avary, but was also rejected by Scott. Scott described the two rejected screenplays as conventional biopics of Domino Harvey's life, which was not what he had in mind. Finally, Richard Kelly was asked to write the screenplay after Scott read his script for Southland Tales. Kelly was sent transcripts of Domino Harvey's interviews with Tony Scott, but he did not read the scripts that Scott had rejected. In discussing the finished product, Kelly commented that "...Domino might be one of the most subversive films released by a major studio since Fight Club".
Read more about this topic: Domino (film)
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