Update: THR is reporting the film has now being shelved because the filmmakers don’t actually have the rights to the novel — classic mistake. Check out the original story below.
I can say this much for James Franco‘s Blood Meridian adaptation: nobody wants it more than him. He first dipped into the nasty waters of Cormac McCarthy‘s seminal text — one that usually tops lists ranking the best post-World War II novels — by signing on more than five years ago. That didn’t seem to work out, at least initially, though he did get to work on another McCarthy adaptation, Child of God, about which we were rather positive; and that was followed by the release of test footage, 25 minutes in total, from which his perspective and approach should be gleaned a bit. If nothing else, this is exactly how a multi-hyphenate keeps chipping away at the adaptation of their favorite novel, its “unfilmable” nature be damned.
Giving credence to the belief that good things come to those who wait, Franco has come closer than ever: he’s nabbing Russell Crowe, Tye Sheridan, and Vincent D’Onofrio as co-stars in Blood Meridian, which Scott Rudin and Cassian Elwes (Elvis & Nixon, Queen of the Desert) are to produce alongside the actor’s Rabbit Bandini. [Deadline]
While production details don’t go much deeper than that, and while some of us might like to know more almost immediately (morbid curiosity or not), imminent Cannes deals should pull back the curtain a bit — as to who’s playing who (I’d imagine Sheridan is The Kid, for one) and where / when it rolls cameras, chiefly. (And count me curious if Todd Field‘s once-in-development script has any hand in this production.) Are you excited? Dreading this like the fire of a thousand suns? If the statement up top carries any morsel of truth, one thing seems certain today: James Franco is a happy man.