Two of Italy’s most-praised directors currently working are moving forward with their next films. First up, Paolo Sorrentino, following his stint into television with The Young Pope, is readying his next film, a biopic on Silvio Berlusconi. He’s now cast his star of the Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, as well as Ill Divo, Toni Servillo, to lead the feature, according to Variety.
Set to begin shooting this summer in Italy as Sorrentino sharpens the screenplay, the current title is Loro (aka Them), which is also a play on L’oro, meaning gold. The drama about the media mogul who become Italy’s 50th Prime Minister is currently seeking financing, which is said to be proven difficult, although Amazon may be considering jumping aboard. Not expected be a “scathing critique,” the director aims to depict the idea that power is everyone and Berlusconi as a “concentrate of non-negligible mysteries.”
In other Italian cinema news, and more related that what one might imagine, Servillo was set to shoot Matteo Garrone‘s Pinocchio, but that project has now been put on hold — likely the reason he was freed up to take on Sorrentino’s film — and now the Gomorrah director is eying a new film. He’ll be next directing Dogman, a revenge film set in Rome’s criminal underworld.
Variety reports the film is inspired by a “homicide committed by a coked-out dog groomer during the late 1980s in the gangland outside Rome.” One of the most gruesome cases in Italy after World WII, it’s described as “a Western in an urban and contemporary context.” Garrone adds the film will be set “in a [Roman] periphery where the law of the jungle prevails, honor and money are the only things that naturally mean something, and drugs and violence are the only way out.” As for Pinocchio, it’s still in the works, but with its bigger budget, more financing needs to be worked out.
If productions go as planned, expect Loro and Dogman to premiere in 2018.