Long thought to be lost, a script written by the late Stanley Kubrick, which was found a few years ago, is finally being developed into a film. It will be called Lunatic at Large and according to Production Weekly it will star Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell.
The film is based on a treatment by pulp author Jim Thompson and commissioned by Kubrick in the late 1950s, after working with the writer on The Killing and Paths Of Glory. According to The Playlist, Kubrick intended it to be his next project after Spartacus but had lost his only copy of the manuscript within his vast library. It was only after Kubrick’s death in 1999 that his son-in-law, archivist Philip Hobbs found the manuscript.
Lunatic at Large is a mystery-thriller about which person among a group is “the true escapee from a nearby mental hospital.” A New York Times article in 2006 published a synopsis of the finished script by screenwriter Stephen R. Clarke:
Set in New York in 1956, it tells the story of Johnnie Sheppard, an ex-carnival worker with serious anger-management issues, and Joyce, a nervous, attractive barfly he picks up in a Hopperesque tavern scene. There’s a newsboy who flashes a portentous headline, a car chase over a railroad crossing with a train bearing down, and a romantic interlude in a spooky, deserted mountain lodge.The great set piece is a nighttime carnival sequence in which Joyce, lost and afraid, wanders among the tents and encounters a sideshow’s worth of familiar carnie types: the Alligator Man, the Mule-Faced Woman, the Midget Monkey Girl, the Human Blockhead, with the inevitable noggin full of nails.
In 2006, it was commercial director Chris Palmer who was set to make his feature debut in directing Lunatic at Large, but there’s no word yet if he or Clarke are still attached to the project. But with Johannson and Rockwell attached it won’t be long before a talented Director and possibly new writer join the ranks. The last Kubrick film was Eyes Wide Shut in 1999 so this film will undoubtedly become highly anticipated as more information is revealed.
What do you think about Kubrick’s lost project?