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Olivier Assayas will write and direct Wasp Network, an adaptation of Fernando Morais’s 2015 book, The Last Soldiers of the Cold War: The Story of the Cuban Five. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Rebecca Ford has the story and Verso Books has the brief: “Through the 1980s and 1990s, violent anti-Castro groups based in Florida carried out hundreds of military attacks on Cuba, bombing hotels and shooting up Cuban beaches with machine guns. The Cuban government struck back with the Wasp Network—a dozen men and two women—sent to infiltrate those organizations. The Last Soldiers of the Cold War tells the story of those unlikely Cuban spies and their eventual unmasking and prosecution by US authorities.”
Via Jordan Raup at the Film Stage, Movie City News and others, I’m only just now catching up with Alex Withrow‘s account of a recent Q&A in DC in which Terrence Malick declared that he’s “repented the idea” of working without a screenplay. Having shot To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017) without one, he’s found that there’s “a lot of strain when working without a script because you can lose track of where you are.” On the other hand, “you always feel with a script that you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And with no script, there’s no round hole, there’s just air. But I’m backing away from that style now.” Malick’s next film, the World War II-set Radegund, should be out some time this year.
Screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is taking on Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune project, reports Variety‘sJustin Kroll. Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel has been adapted twice before, most famously by David Lynch in 1984, and then again in 2000 as a miniseries by John Harrison. And of course, Frank Pavich’s Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) tells the story of Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s lavish but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get an adaptation off the ground in the mid-70s. Meantime, Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 will be out in October.
Teaser for Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable with Louis Garrel as Jean-Luc Godard
Justin Kroll has been on a tear over the past few days:
- Colin Farrell may join Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, Andre Holland, Michelle Rodriguez and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) in Steve McQueen’s Widows. “Based on the 1983 British miniseries about a caper gone wrong, the story follows four armed robbers who are killed in a failed heist attempt, leaving their widows to finish the job.”
- Michael Keaton may take on the role of the villain in Tim Burton’s Dumbo.
- Sam Mendes is “in early talks” to direct an adaptation of Emil Ferris’s graphic novel, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. “The story follows a 10-year-old girl who tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor—a Holocaust survivor—while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold.”
- Jeremy Renner and Hannibal Buress are “in negotiations” to join Ed Helms in Jeff Tomsic’s comedy, Tag, “based on a true story featured in the Wall Street Journal about a group of friends who have been playing a no-holds-barred version of the children’s game Tag for the last 30 years.”
“The Big Short’s Adam McKay has found the cast for his untitled film about Dick Cheney,” reports Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr. “Christian Bale is his choice for Dick Cheney, Steve Carell is the choice for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Amy Adams is the choice for Cheney’s wife Lynne. Now it’s up to Paramount to cast the vote on a green light.”
Vincent Cassel has joined Kristen Stewart in William Eubank’s Underwater, reports Leonard Pearce at the Film Stage. The story “follows Stewart’s Nora, part of a underwater scientific crew who endure an earthquake and must fight for survival.”
Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub Is Mektoub, an adaptation of François Bégaudeau’s 2011 novel La Blessure, la vraie, “follows a young screenwriter who travels to the Mediterranean and gets involved in a love triangle,” writes thePlaylist‘s Kevin Jagernauth. “French publication Le Point reports (with some translation help from Playlist reader Jerome) that Kechiche has wound up turning Mektoub Is Mektoub into a ‘familial saga’ comprised of two films: Les dés sont jetés (The Die Is Cast) and Pray for Jack. The complication is that Kechiche’s contract with the financiers is to deliver one film, so now everyone is headed to court. The director hopes to emerge victorious, and if so, wants to show both pictures at Cannes in 2018.”
Clip from David Lynch: The Art Life
Baltasar Kormákur will direct an adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s next book, I Am Victor, reports Elbert Wyche for Screen. “Skyfall and Casino Royale writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are currently adapting the screenplay about a morally corrupt divorce lawyer who gets himself framed for a series of murders.”
From the Hollywood Reporter‘s Rebecca Ford comes word that Saban Films has picked up North American distribution rights to Alexandros Avranas’s True Crimes with Jim Carrey and Charlotte Gainsbourg. “The film is based on a New Yorker article about the homicide investigation of a slain business man and the novelist eventually convicted of the murder.”
Walter Hill will direct two episodes of Goliath, the Amazon series starring Billy Bob Thornton, reports Joe Otterson for Variety.
“Filming has begun on BBC Two mini-series Collateral, starring Carey Mulligan and written by renowned playwright David Hare,” reports Orlando Parfitt for Screen. “Set in present day London, the plot revolves around the repercussions surrounding the fatal shooting of a pizza delivery man. Mulligan plays the detective inspector investigating the crime, [John] Simm is a politician embroiled in a scandal and [Billie] Piper his unpredictable ex-girlfriend.”
Even though the new live action Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johansson “stands to lose at least $60M,” as Anthony D’Alessandro reports at Deadline, another animated production based on the manga is in the works. Carolyn Giardina for the Hollywood Reporter: “It will be co-directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series) and Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed).”
HUSHTRUTH....... 