Rob Marshall at the center of Geisha flap

Variety reports that out director Rob Marshall (Chicago) is at the center of a flapdoodle over the ever-growing delay in bringing Arthur Gold's best-selling novel Memoirs of a Geisha to the big screen. Marshall wants to direct the film, but the project is being produced by Columbia and DreamWorks. Complicating matters is that Marshall's contract with Miramax gives that studio dibs on the follow-up to his Oscar-winning screen debut. Many talks have gone on among the three studios to come to a coproduction agreement, but no scenario has been acceptable to all involved. The 1997 Geisha has passed through many Hollywood hands already: Steven Spielberg, Spike Jonze, and queer Boys Don't Cry director Kimberly Peirce have all been attached to, and then dropped out of, the production, although Spielberg remains attached as an executive producer.