Three-plus years since mother!, by your count either his greatest achievement or proof it’s time to find a new career, Darren Aronofsky’s supposedly landed new feature: Discussing Film report he’ll adapt Samuel D. Hunter’s play The Whale for A24. American Empirical Pictures, whose name appears before every Wes Anderson feature, are producing.
In a description that sounds wholly sympatico with his oeuvre of obsession, addiction, self-destruction, whatever else Wikipedia cites in their opening paragraph, Hunter’s play is descibed like so (via Playwrights Horizons):
On the outskirts of Mormon Country, Idaho, a six hundred pound recluse hides away in his apartment eating himself to death. Desperate to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter, he reaches out to her, only to find a viciously sharp-tongued and wildly unhappy teen.
Unfathomably bleak, sure, though same description suggests a “big-hearted and fiercely funny” tale of redemption and unexpected grace. All well and good. The real question, though: who’s donning the fat suit or, one hopes, adopting a diet that’ll put every awards-nabbing method actor to shame? Brendan Fraser, it turns out, with Hunter having adapted his own play. So a new question: is Fraser about to have his own Wrestler?
Meanwhile, an update on a project first heard of in fall 2015: Aaron Sorkin’s Lucille Ball biopic Being the Ricardos is moving forward at Amazon, replacing original star Cate Blanchett with Nicole Kidman; new to the project is Javier Bardem, playing husband Desi Arnaz. [Deadline]
À la the Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs, it jettisons a typical biopic arc for a concentrated attention: set over a standard production week of I Love Lucy—”Monday table read through Friday audience filming”—it follows a crisis between Ball and Arnaz that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.” COVID complications make uncertain when production will begin.