I've seen Spike Lee, Baz Luhrmann, Rob Marshall, Sam Mendes and Martin Scorcese all discussed. Spike Lee has his own very pointed agenda in all his films. He might have made an interesting movie, but there probably wouldn't have been much of Rent in it. Baz Luhrmann's style is so over the top that all his characters feel like puppets, not people. His films are fun but have little emotional connection of the kind that Rent demands. Rob Marshall would have been somewhat the same, I feel, in a less pronounced way. He's style over substance too. I have a lot of respect for Sam Mendes, but his emotional temperament is the polar opposite of Larson's. His best subject is probably alienation, not connection. Martin Scorcese seems like the only real possibility, and apparently he came to the conclusion that he couldn't find a way to do it. Aside from that, spectacle seems to be overtaking emotion in his work, and it has some of the same chilly remoteness as Mendes'.
Sorry to go into all this detail, but I work in film and have thought about it a lot.
Updated On: 2/5/06 at 07:25 PM