'Adam Jones' Now Titled As 'Untitled John Wells Project'

Deadline - The latest dish on the John Wells-directed cooking project with Bradley Cooper once called Chef: Harvey Weinstein has sent the just-announced title Adam Jones back to the kitchen. They’ll call it Untitled John Wells project until they whip up something tastier. All this arose when they were beaten to the table by Jon Favreau’s food truck film, and their plan to call the film Chef deflated like a bad souffle.

“Even though our writer Steven Knight claims we had the rights first, Jon Favreau killed us and made a great movie that we all love,” Weinstein told Deadline but wouldn’t say what potential titles were now on the menu. “And while our film deals with cooking it’s about different things… We tried to get Lee Daniels’ Chef Movie but Warner Brothers got there first and didn’t give it to us, so now we’re calling it the Untitled John Wells project.”

Weinstein was joking about last summer’s drama, when Warner Bros lawyers blocked TWC’s ask to use the title The Butler because WB had an early 20th century silent black and white short film in its library. It seemed like an apparent attempt to leverage  Weinstein into surrendering his claim to first dollar gross points on The Hobbit trilogy (like that would ever happen). Weinstein had the last laugh when he used the title Lee Daniels’ The Butler which, helped by the attention from the title fight, grossed $160 million worldwide on a $30 million production budget.

The Wells-directed culinary pic just started, shooting a couple days in New Orleans before moving to London. Cooper plays a bad boy Michelin Star enfant terrible chef who self destructs in Paris and has to repair his career and life. Sienna Miller and Uma Thurman, Daniel Bruhl, Emma Thompson, Omar Sy, Fifty Shades Of Grey‘s Jamie Dornan and Alicia Vikander star. Knight wrote the script and Stacy Sher, Michael Shamberg and Erwin Stoff produce, with Dylan Sellers, Julie Rapaport and Negeen Yazdi overseeing for Weinstein.