After a successfully career in his homeland of China, director Zhang Yimou has been planning to finally go where many of international colleagues have gone: Hollywood. We got word last year that he was recruited by Warner Bros. for a new take on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Josh Brolin in the lead, but now a new project has popped up that he could take on sooner.
According to Deadline, he’s in talks with Universal Pictures to adapt the Robert Ludlum thriller The Parsifal Mosaic with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard‘s company producing. Adapted by David Self (Road to Perdition), with a forthcoming pass by Zhang, the story follows a retired CIA operative who comes back after he learns the love of his life is actually alive, after he thought she had died.
While the transition to Hollywood doesn’t always work out for foreign directors, we imagine it will be smooth for the experienced Hero director, whose visual passions could easily be translated here. His latest film, Coming Home, is expected to premiere at Cannes Film Festival this year and has already been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for what’s hopefully a release by the end of the year.
Would you like to see the Flowers of War director helm this project or Hunchback first!