After James Cameron decided to take the next half decade to work on Avatar 2 & 3 for Fox, the fate of his mega-budget Cleopatra epic was up in the air. Paul Greengrass was rumored to step in, but then he decided on his MLK film Memphis. Deadline now reports we have another major directing contender.
Coming off his snub at the Oscars for The Social Network, David Fincher is now attached to direct Cleopatra with Angelina Jolie. Producer Scott Rudin has a strong relationship with Fincher and is behind the project. They’ve worked together and The Social Network and Fincher’s currently-in-production adaptation of Stieg Larsson‘s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Check out Rudin’s take on the film below, which is based on Stacy Schiff‘s novel Cleopatra: A Life:
“It is a completely revisionist Cleopatra, a much more grown-up sophisticated version. She’s not a sex kitten, she’s a politician, strategist, warrior. In the Joseph Mankiewicz movie, Elizabeth Taylor is a seductress, but the histories of Cleopatra have been written by men. This is the first to be written by a woman. It felt like such a blow-the-doors-off-the-hinges idea of how to tell it, impossible to resist.”
It all depends on time though. Steve Zaillian, who wrote Dragon Tattoo is already underway with the second novel, The Girl Who Played With Fire and Fincher is “expected to return.” There is also Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo. Right now the studio is looking for a new writer and making the decision on 3D, now with Cameron not involved. Fincher’s never handled an “epic” of this scale, and after Dragon Tattoo he may be interested in exploring another powerful female character. I’d honestly be looking forward to his version of this story.
Would you like to see Fincher direct Cleopatra?