When we heard that James Cameron decided to direct Avatar 2 and 3 for Fox over the next 5 years, the fate of the mega-budget Cleopatra epic he was interested in was unsure. It is still moving along strongly though. The project still has prolific producer Scott Rudin behind it and Angelina Jolie attached to lead. It is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning biography Cleopatra written by Stacy Schiff and will be a sweeping epic in the vein of Gone With the Wind.
Deadline now reports that they are “pretty close” to locking down a director and they have their early sights set on The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass. While nothing is locked down they are looking for a “smart, tough, political, hard-nosed” director. Certainly sounds like he would fit all four categories, let’s just hope he doesn’t get to Green Zone-y on the political end. Rudin also explained more about the project below.
“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. We’re pretty close. A lot of directors want to do it, but there is only a handful we’ll make it with.”
As for James Cameron deciding to do Avatar sequels instead:
“I’ve been a good friend of Jim Cameron’s since I was the executive on Aliens. I got promoted because of my relationship with Jim Cameron and the guy’s been a seminal figure in my career. I never for one second thought we were being leveraged. I fully expected Fox to make the play they did, to make sure he didn’t do Cleopatra. I wasn’t surprised when they did.”
Sony is hoping for a 2011 start date on this epic.
Do you think Greengrass would be a good fit?