A look inside Hollywood and the movies : AFTER ‘THE FIRM’ : Sydney Pollack’s Still Adapting

Sydney Pollack, whose latest film “The Firm” has taken in more than $85 million in less than three weeks of release, is mulling a suitable follow-up. Press reports had the director committed to the Warner Bros. film version of the bestseller “The Bridges of Madison County” by Robert James Waller. Pollack calls such talk premature.

“I am seriously considering the project,” the director says. “I did agree to try to get a screenplay together in the hope we could make it this fall. Since only half the script is written, however, the picture won’t go until the spring. There’s plenty of work out there and I may go with something else first. I’m not officially on anything at the moment.”

The director acknowledges that the book--rights to which were lined up by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment last year -- is a “difficult” one to adapt. The story of a lonely Iowa farm-wife who has a four-day fling--and a lifelong infatuation--with a sensual photographer assigned to take pictures of some local bridges, the book’s action is both internal and slight. Tough to transfer to the screen--even if, as rumor has it, Robert Redford and Academy Award nominee Mary McDonnell (“Passion Fish”) have been lined up to play the leads.

Another misconception, says Pollack. Redford--with whom he worked on “The Way We Were,” “Out of Africa” and “Havana,” among other films--is a “candidate,” he admits. But, without a script, no actors are attached. And Pollack’s decision to have Kurt Luedtke take over the screenplay from the Academy-Award-winning Ron Bass (“Rain Man”) was based on his history with the former, he says, rather than on any doubts about the latter.

The veteran director, in the mood for romance after “The Firm,” has another Warner Bros. love story on the horizon: “Possession,” based on the acclaimed English novel by A.S. Byatt published in 1990. This one, to be produced by Paula Weinstein’s Spring Creek Productions, is two love stories, in fact. Playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”) will be tackling the tale of two modern-day academics who fall in love while researching an affair between two Victorian-era poets.

“ ‘Possession’ is a romantic detective story,” says Pollack, “a movie that contrasts the repressed sexuality of the past with passion in the present. In some ways, it’s not unlike (John Fowles’) ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman,’ and we’ve encountered similar problems bringing it to the screen. Though it’s a lot further along than ‘Bridges,’ in no way will it be ready by the fall.”

Word has it that Paramount is also vying for a return engagement with Pollack after “The Firm.” Industry insiders suggest that the studio is elbowing HBO aside to acquire John le Carre’s just-published post-Cold War spy novel “The Night Manager” for the director down the road.

One Paramount executive finds it a likely scenario. “Sydney has always found it hard to commit,” the executive says. “That the Le Carre novel promises to be a bestseller like ‘Bridges’ and ‘The Firm’ should provide added impetus.”