Hot off the excellent death row documentary Into the Abyss, director Werner Herzog is rounding up his next possible projects. He’ll been seen against Tom Cruise as a villain in the thriller One Shot later this year, but Screen Daily now reports a few potential directing projects.
First up, he has a quick update on the Gertrude Bell biopic Queen of the Desert, which Naomi Watts is still circling. Herzog said the film on the British explorer is “not easy to finance and the Arabian desert region is complicated these days.” So, it looks like we’ll put it on backburner while we focus two possible documentaries.
Herzog revealed that his next film may be a “stylized” documentary about volcanoes, in which he is collaborating with Cambridge University professor Clive Oppenheimer, who wrote the book Eruptions that Shook the World. Said to to be in the vein of his 1992 documentary Lessons of Darkness, this film could likely see the director venture to active volcanoes to capture footage, showing how they “affect climates and human society.” Check out a quote from producer Andre Singer below.
“The idea of doing a large screen format film about volcanoes is very exciting. Herzog, volcanoes, IMAX (or other large screen format): those three words go together fantastically. The film would be a combination of nature and spectacle and their potentially devastating effects on mankind. It would be narratively led with Indonesia and Java potential destinations.”
The director is known for taking bold risks with his documentaries and this seems like a fitting wild adventure for him, and something I’d love to see in the IMAX format. On a smaller scale, Herzog also announced plans to develop another documentary following Helmut Newton, the late German-Australian fashion photographer.
Requested by his widow, the documentary would showcase the life of the Vogue photographer known for his erotic black and white photography work. With Channel Four financing the development, it seems like this is a project that could be an ongoing one, while Herzog focuses on other expeditions. Considering the director’s rampant output, I’d expect confirmation on what we’ll see next soon.
Which Herzog project would you like to see the most?