Following up Blue Ruin and Green Room — which will get a 2016 spring release via A24 — Jeremy Saulnier will re-team with the distributor. The Wrap reports that he’s been set to adapt William Giraldi’s novel Hold the Dark for his next project. Scripted by star Macon Blair, it’s described as an “intense tale of fate, family, and revenge set in the remote Alaskan wilderness. When a child is taken from his village by a pack of wolves, an expert hunter is summoned to track and destroy them. His mission leads him down an increasingly dark and shocking path as he confronts the cruelty of nature and his own failures as a man. With the child’s grief-crazed father closing in behind him and a fierce, unforgiving landscape ahead, the question becomes, who is really being hunted?” It sounds like fantastic, intense material for the director, so we look forward to updates as they arrive.
We also have development news in the unfortunate direction, as Terry Gilliam‘s much-cursed The Man who Killed Don Quixote is yet again delayed. His adaptation of the Cervantes novel was set to start shooting later this year with Jack O’Connell and John Hurt, but now with the latter’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, The Times reports it’s been delayed due to insurance concerns. However, Hurt says, “Terry seems very optimistic that we will start filming soon. Optimism is a good thing.” Indeed, hopefully things get off the ground soon.
Following his Oscar-nominated Belgium drama The Broken Circle Breakdown, director Felix van Groeningen followed it up with Belgica, which will likely premiere next year. He’s now found his next project, one that will team him with Brad Pitt‘s Plan B. According to Variety, he’ll direct the former Cameron Crowe project Beautiful Boy, based on David Sheff‘s book, which follows “meth addiction and recovery through the eyes of a father who watches his son as he struggles with the disease.” With casting expecting to get underway shortly, hopefully production begins next year.
In a brief, update, after his latest (excellent) drama A War earned the status of Denmark’s Oscar entry, Tobias Lindholm is coming to Hollywood. Deadline reports he’s been set to adapt The Tunnels for director Paul Greengrass, an interesting pairing considering they had dueling ship hijacking movies a few years back. Based on Greg Mitchell’s upcoming book, it follows a group of “West Germans attempting to sneak into East Berlin with the aid of American news networks.”
Lastly, following up the Benedict Cumberbatch-led drama The Imitation Game, director Morten Tyldum is currently shooting Passengers with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. THR now reports he may have found another new project, as he’s been attached to Agatha Christie‘s best-selling novel And Then There Were None. Published in 1939, it follows “10 strangers who are invited to an isolated island by a mysterious host, and start to get killed one by one.”
Which of the above projects are you most looking forward to?