Keeping up the healthy late-career pace, Wim Wenders has settled on his next feature — the one after The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez, that is, which will itself follow the still-not-domestically-released Every Thing Will Be Fine. The picture’s titled Submergence, and, plot-wise, sounds an awful lot like his work: an adaptation of J.M. Ledgard‘s novel, it runs across the globe and shifts focus between James More, an English reporter, as he’s held captive by jiahdists in Somalia, and Danielle Flinders, a “biomathematician” exploring life on the ocean floor. As former lovers in their own perilous situations, they both remember better times spent at a French hotel on the Atlantic coast. [Deadline]
A bit of Until the End of the World‘s romance here, a bit of the director’s documentary approach there — two ingredients that have a more-or-less-equal chance of being wondrous or a clunker when combined. (Which is, needless to say, all the more reason to pay attention.) James McAvoy will lead, Erin Dignam (The Last Face) will pen, and Wenders is expected to roll cameras towards the end of March. Backup Media will finance; Lila 9th Productions are producing.
A not-at-all-similar-seeming project is developing with Henry Selick, who, according to Variety, has partnered with Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele for yet another stop-motion project. Perhaps remaining true to the spirit of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, he’s next conjured Wendell and Wild, which, in his own words, focuses on “two scheming demon brothers who must face their arch-nemesis, the demon-dusting nun Sister Helly, and her two acolytes, the goth teens Kat and Raoul.”
Fans of Key & Peele need not worry about the pair being fit into someone else’s wheelhouse: Peele will be co-writing the project, which all three players are “currently discussing” on a creative level. A match made in heaven? I wouldn’t think of pairing Selick’s gothic stylings with a more surreal and of-the-moment tone that defined the stars’ Comedy Central show, but those differences might be just the trick to getting something special.