Script Resurrected: Turned Into Famed Unreleased Jerry Lewis Holocaust Tale, The Now-Funded Screenplay Might Finally See

https://deadline.com/2024/08/the-day-the-clown-cried-script-set-up-funded-unreleased-jerry-lewis-holocaust-tale-1236041137/

The Day The Clown Cried is getting another chance at the big screen. Rewritten by Jerry Lewis, who starred in and directed a 1972 feature drama that went unfinished and unreleased, the script for the Holocaust tale is being revived by K. Jam Media founder Kia Jam. Jam has been part of the financing and producing of films ranging from The Killing Game to In the Heart of the Sea, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and numerous others.

Jam said he has executed a purchase agreement on the original script by Joan O’Brien and Charles Denton. Lewis took a hand in reshaping it as a starring and directing vehicle. Jam is going back to the original screenplay. He said he has the production financing, and the next step is to secure a filmmaker with the guts to tell a most harrowing story.

Lewis disavowed the film and did his best to make sure it never got released, probably because of a combination of rights issues and an outcry over the audacity of the iconic comic actor setting a film in the concentration camps involving the deaths of Jewish children at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. He was accused of unabashedly chasing an Oscar.