Schumacher Won’t Direct ‘Band Played On’

“And the Band Played On,” Randy Shilts’ 1987 book about the history of AIDS, has hit another snag on the way to television.

Director Joel Schumacher and HBO Pictures jointly announced Monday that Schumacher will not direct the TV movie, which until recently had been scheduled to go into production in Atlanta this month.

Robert Cooper, senior vice president for HBO Pictures, said in a prepared statement that the pay-cable channel is still committed to turning the book into a film. The statement did not provide any timetable for production, noting simply that HBO Pictures and producer Aaron Spelling are “fine-tuning the script and selecting a new director for the project.”

In the first two years after “Band’s” publication, NBC held the option to make it into a TV movie, but eventually let it drop. HBO stepped in and was ready to begin production until conflicts developed with Schumacher (“Dying Young,” “Flatliners”) over the script.

“Through the creative process of developing the docudrama for HBO,” Schumacher said Monday, “I came to the conclusion that the complex story of the first 10 years of the AIDS epidemic in the world would be best presented in a documentary format. HBO is known for its docudramas, and I’m not comfortable with that dramatic form in retelling Randy’s chronicle.”

Shilts said that Schumacher wanted to do a documentary “along the lines of (PBS’) ‘The Civil War,’ and HBO didn’t want to go in that direction. And frankly I don’t want a documentary either. You’d lose too much of your audience.”