goncharov (1973) modern-day reboot fancast

goncharov as robert pattinson

andrey as matthew patrick

katya as anya taylor joy

sofia as phoebe waller-bridge

So I used my time machine (which is canon to my blog but which can only be used for shitposting; there are reasons, don't worry about it) and I went ahead in time three years to see what was up with the Goncharov "remake," aka Goncharov (2025), aka the Meme that Became a Real Movie. 

Well, things started out promising even though Martin Scorsese simply would not bend to pressure and direct the Meme Movie, but when the Safdie Brothers DID sign on, it was with Scorsese's blessing. The script appeared to bounce around through most of 2023, there were three different writers attached in the span of five months, including Ronald Bronstein, Steven Zaillian, and most exciting at one point, Gillian Flynn. Most industry people really expected it to eventually fall to Zaillian, and that all of the hot potato was simply premature reporting. Put a pin in that.

This was around the time (July 2023) that Tumblr launched the ill-fated (to put it mildly) crowdfunding campaign so that user @tuvuofa, maintainer of the Goncharov fan wiki, could drop out of college to finish their screenplay, and move to Hollywood just to pitch it. @tuvuofa stole $21,000 of donations before deactivating their blog, deleting the wiki, and disappearing. A few blogs have since claimed to be the vanished scammer, offering hivliving-ian tall tales to explain the events. None have truly passed the sniff test. 

September 2023, the film was officially announced to have its stars, and this is where the trouble started. Robert Pattinson as Goncharov made sense, was a Safdie mainstay, and most were excited about this casting. There were exceptions. Case in point: 

So we had Pattinson as Goncharov, Florence Pugh as Katya - fine (the age gap discourse was heavy but brief), Avan Jogia as Andrei (we'll get back to that one), Jake Gyllenhaal as Ice Pick Joe, Nina Dobrev as Sofia, and Taylor Zakhar Perez as Sascha. 

Altogether, not bad. The cast was, for the most part, young, and a lot of them had proven acting chops. Even before principal filming started Goncharov (2025) was being hailed as the next "it" movie. 

Then, the trouble began. Robert Pattinson elected to drop out, the provided reason being Batman filming obligations even though the new Batman was already in the can by February 2024. This was bad sign number one. We all wondered "who's gonna play Goncharov now??" and at the same time we all were thinking "please not Harry Styles" 

Well, the monkey’s paw being what it is, it wasn't Harry Styles, but it WAS Timothee Chalamet. 

Then, the script drama. After Chalamet joined the film, we started to hear about rewrites. Nothing really added up, but we went along with it. Two weeks into principal shooting, the story breaks that the script still isn't even COMPLETE, and that studio meddling has been turning the movie into less of a tense, emotional crime drama with fleshed out characters and implied complex relationships, and more into a CW-esque melodramatic romance that just so happens to be set in the world of organized crime. In Naples. 

So as soon as this story drops, Robert Pattinson metaphorically jumps the fence of his enclosure and admits he was 100% lying about leaving due to Batman obligations, trashes the script as it was when he last saw it, and blows the whistle on the biggest bombshell to date: the Safdies aren't even attached anymore. 

Look, I'll make a long story short since the Time Cops are probably going to come in here blasting at any moment. Here’s the future of Goncharov (2025): the movie debuts to what can best be described as critical bemusement. Returns are paltry given the hype. Avan Jogia delivers the performance of his life, and his career enters its own Pattinson Arc of Respectable Unhinged Roles. Still, everyone agrees that he seems to be acting in a Completely Different, better film. The way he punches the wall during the Train Scene becomes a meme unto itself, as everyone is convinced he was channeling real anger in that moment at how wooden Chalamet's performance was. 

Time machine didn't have the juice to pop over to 2026, but last I heard a major campaign is underway, similar to #ReleasetheSnyderCut, to fund the Safdie helmed, Zaillian written, Pattinson starring version of Goncharov. 

Discourse is split between the camp that's pissed off because the IP is now owned by Legendary Pictures, so it won't "really" be Goncharov, and the camp that's thinking "finally the characters can be Neapolitan and things will make sense" because they didn't even read the synopsis of the movie. It's about the Russian mafia IN Naples, idiot.

They could never remake Goncharov today. Can you imagine? The Big Wigs in Hollywood would want to modernize the movie and stuff some crypto sub-plot in there, along with a bunch of other generic action movie garbage a la Michael Bay which would cheapen the allure of the original's practical effects. Forget most of the dialogue; that's gone for the eye candy, which includes the aforementioned action movie garbage as well as gratuitous sex and nudity. Hollywood will want someone like Ana de Armas to play Katya, and they will waste her talent, giving her no dialogue and treating her more like a one-dimensional femme fatale trope for the male gaze than the polished and complex character whom Cybill Shepherd played in the 1973 film. Could Timothee Chalamet fill Pacino's shoes? Could that Jeremy Allen White guy from The Bear fill de Niro's? No. No! And even if they could, they could never recreate the rich relationship between Andrey and Gonch, especially when it comes to the romantic undertones. You wouldn't be able to blame the actors. The script simply wouldn't give them sufficient material. Forget it. We will never see a Goncharov remake, and we are better for it. Appreciate the original and the fact that we have rediscovered it instead of trying to warp it into something gouache and tacky.

zepotha wants to be goncharov SO BAD but it will never be goncharov… goncharov had a heart and soul! it had so much fan made content and a coherent plot. zepotha is just comment bombing the same thing on random peoples tiktoks