In the Works: Hogg, Hansen-Løve, and More

The Cannes Film Festival always kicks up a flurry of announcements of projects in the works. Now that we’ve just passed the halfway mark, let’s have a look at some of the more interesting titles we’ve heard about so far.

“Robert Pattinson, Tom Burke, Ariane Labed, and Richard Ayoade are due to star in British filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s (Archipelago) next film The Souvenir, which will be executive-produced by Martin Scorsese,” reports Screen’s Andreas Wiseman. The film “will be made in two parts, the first feature set to shoot this summer and the second in summer 2018. Spanning the decade of the 1980’s, the film will chart the story of a young film student, involved in her first serious love affair, who tries to disentangle fact from fiction in a relationship with a complicated and untrustworthy man.”

Also, Ricardo Darin has joined Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Asghar Farhadi’s untitled Spanish-language project shooting in Madrid this summer. “Darin is set to play Cruz’s husband from Buenos Aires in the family drama and psychological thriller which will explore how the kidnapping of a young girl leads to the unraveling of family secrets.”

And Focus Features has acquired world rights to Wim Wenders’s documentary Pope Francis – A Man of His Word, “only the second co-production that the Vatican has made with outside filmmakers and the first in which a Pope addresses the audience directly, discussing topics such as ecology, immigration, consumerism, and social justice.”

“Greta Gerwig, Mia Wasikowska, and John Turturro have signed for French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s English-language debut Bergman Island, set on the Swedish island of Fårö which was home to the late director Ingmar Bergman,” reports Screen’s Melanie Goodfellow. “The picture revolves around an American filmmaking couple who retreat to the island for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Bergman.”

Also, Takeshi Kitano is at work on Outrage Coda, which follows Outrage (2010) and Outrage Beyond (2012). The trilogy focuses on “the fierce war between rival gangs, the Sanno and the Hanabishi, which ended in the defeat of the Sanno clan.”

“China’s Zhejiang Jinke Entertainment has unveiled a partnership with Kurosawa Production that will see the two companies produce unfinished or unmade titles by the late Akira Kurosawa,” reports Patrick Frater for Variety. “The first movie to be made by the pair will be the Japanese master’s unfinished Silvering Spear. . . . The agreement covers all of Kurosawa’s unfinished features, with the exception of The Mask of the Black Death.”

Peter Bogdanovich will direct a documentary about Buster Keaton. Alex Ritman has details in the Hollywood Reporter.

Ritman also reports that Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, nineteen years in the making—and counting—has hit a new snag. Alfama Films has declared that the project starring Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce is “patently illegal.” To which the producers have snapped back, “Preposterous.”

Despite the chaotic reception it’s received in Cannes this year, Netflix may want to return to the festival next year to premiere the completed version of The Other Side of the Wind, the film Orson Welles worked on in the 1970s. Ray Kelly has more.

“What started as a dream/meme on the Internet has now become a real thing,” writes the Playlist’s Kevin Jagernauth. “Rihanna and Lupita Nyong’o are going to make that buddy movie the webosphere wanted. Ava DuVernay (Selma,13th) will direct the movie, which has been snatched up by Netflix.” How did this happen? Darren Franich and Nicole Sperling tell the full story for Entertainment Weekly.

Jessica Chastain will star in Seducing Ingrid Bergman, reports Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. Based on Chris Greenhalgh’s 2012 novel, it “tells the story of the torrid romance between the Casablanca actress and celebrated war photographer Robert Capa.” More from Fleming:

• Billy Crudup is joining Cate Blanchett and Kristen Wiig in Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette. Based on Maria Semple’s novel, it “focuses on Bernadette, a mother in Seattle who has gone missing and left her teenage daughter to pick up the pieces.”
• “Elizabeth helmer Shekhar Kapur has attached to direct Three Apples Fell From Heaven, a film based on the Micheline Aharonian Marcom novel adapted by Motorcycle Diaries writer José Rivera. The film is set in 1915-1917 as Turks slaughtered Armenians, and revolves around a young female refugee taken in by Turkish neighbors after the death of her parents.”
• And Netflix has acquired film rights to Hello America, the 1981 sci-fi novel by JG Ballard. Ridley Scott will be among the producers.

“Catherine Deneuve and her daughter Chiara Mastroianni are set to topline Julie Bertuccelli’s Claire Darling, a lighthearted drama with fantasy elements that Memento is pre-selling at Cannes.” More from Variety’s Elsa Keslassy:

• The Measure of a Man director Stéphane Brizé and star Vincent Lindon are re-teaming on Un autre monde, the story of a union leader who rises to fame as he fights for factory workers facing layoffs.
• “Baltasar Kormákur is set to co-write and direct a feature film and a miniseries based on Independent People, the epic 1934 novel penned by Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, a leading light of 20th century Icelandic literature.”
• Agnes Jaoui’s Place Publique (working title) will star Jean-Pierre Bacri “as Castro, a once-famous TV host who gets together with old friends, including his ex-wife, at a house-warming party on the outskirts of Paris.” Doesn’t go well, evidently.

“Peter Greenaway is set to write and direct Eisenstein in Hollywood, a chronological prequel to the biographical romantic comedy Eisenstein in Guanajuato.” Ashley Lee has more in the Hollywood Reporter.

From Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose:

• “Willem Dafoe is set to play Vincent van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s upcoming project At Eternity’s Gate. Schnabel, who nabbed the Best Director prize in Cannes in 2007 for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, writes the script with Jean-Claude Carrière.”
• Rachid Bouchareb will direct Omar Sy in the “multi-language action comedy” Belleville Cop. As the titular cop in the Parisian working class neighborhood, Sy teams up with an American cop (Luis Guzman) to uncover a drug ring.
• Marco Pontecorvo will direct Harvey Keitel and Sonia Braga in Fatima, “a project about three children who experience the supernatural and accept their quest to bring a message of peace to the world.”

“Neon and Vice have pre-bought U.S. rights to Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum,” reports Graham Winfrey for IndieWire. The comedy “follows the misadventures of Moondog (Matthew McConaughey), a ‘rebellious and lovable rogue who lives life large.’”

Also,George A. Romero Presents: Road of the Dead is heading to Frontières, the Fantasia International Film Festival’s co-production market. “The story is set on an island where zombie prisoners race cars in a modern-day Coliseum for the entertainment of wealthy humans.”

“Annapurna is boarding Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers, a noir-ish western with Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, and Riz Ahmed, reports Brent Lang for Variety. “It’s an adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s novel of the same name and follows two brothers in 1850s Oregon who are hired to kill a prospector.”

“STX has picked up international rights to All the Money in the World, a true-crime thriller from Ridley Scott based on the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III,” reports THR’s Scott Roxborough. “Michelle Williams, Kevin Spacey, and Mark Wahlberg are set to star.”

“Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to the ghost story The Little Stranger, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Ruth Wilson, and Will Poulter with Lenny Abrahamson [Room] directing,” reports Variety’s Dave McNary. The setting is the “aged estate of Hundreds Hall” in a “remote English village after the close of World War II.”

Leslie Mann and Janelle Monae are joining Steve Carell in Robert Zemeckis’s next feature, based on Jeff Malmberg’s 2010 documentary Marwencol.Variety’s Justin Kroll also reports that Sam Mendes has left one Disney project, James and the Giant Peach, and may join another, a live-action Pinocchio.And Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) will direct Tom Hardy in Venom, a Spider-Man spinoff.

“Asif Kapadia, who won an Oscar for Amy and a BAFTA for Senna, will re-team with actor Irrfan Khan on an adaptation of the novel Moth Smoke by Pakistan-born author Mohsin Hamid,” reports Naman Ramachandran for Variety. “Set in 1998 against the backdrop of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, the Lahore-based novel follows Darashikoh Shehzad, a social misfit who begins an affair with his best friend’s wife.”

The Cities of Love omnibus series continues when Rotterdam, I Love You and Berlin, I Love You shoot this summer, reports Patrick Frater for Variety. Directing shorts for the Rotterdam film are Claire Denis, Atom Egoyan, Mike Figgis, John Maybury, and Pablo Trapero, along with Dutch filmmakers Martin Koolhoven, Paula van der Oest, Joost van Ginkel, and Koen Mortier, and “new voices,” Barry Atsma and Shariff Nasr. The Berlin film “involves Patrick Dempsey and Renee Zellweger making their directorial debuts alongside Massy Tadjedin, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Shekhar Kapur, Tom Van Avermaet, and Fernando Eimbcke, Til Schweiger, Dennis Gansel, and Dani Levy.”

Koji Fukada’s (Harmonium) next project is The Man from the Sea, reports Liz Shackleton for Screen. “The story follows a man who is found washed up on a beach in Banda Aceh, Indonesia suffering from amnesia and speaking in broken Indonesian and Japanese.”

From Deadline’s Anita Busch:

• Nash Edgerton will direct Joel Edgerton, David Oyelowo, Amanda Seyfried, and Charlize Theron in the “dark comedy” Gringo, “about a businessman (Oyelowo) who goes to Mexico and ends up crossing the line from citizen to criminal.”
• Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney and Portlandia fame is making her directorial debut with Fairy Godmother. “Its logline: When sought-after Fairy Godmother Faye is hired by a mind-bogglingly gorgeous teenage client, Kenzie, to find her true love with the hottest prince in the land, Faye finds herself facing an unfamiliar challenge when the prince starts falling for her instead.”
• Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy,This Boy’s Life) will direct Ron Perlman, Famke Janssen, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Facinelli, and Jacqueline Bisset in Asher, about an ex-Mossad agent gone rogue.

“Jesse Eisenberg will play the legendary mime Marcel Marceau in Resistance, a feature that will focus on his involvement in the French resistance during the Second World War,” reports Screen’s Jeremy Kay. Jonathan Jakubowicz (Hands of Stone) “will direct from his screenplay.”

From Variety’s John Hopewell comes word that Lorenzo Vigas (Venice Golden Lion-winner From Afar) will direct and Michel Franco (Chronic) will produce The Box, which “starts with a 16-year-old Mexican boy being asked to collect the bones of his father, which were found in a mass grave in Northern Mexico. After doing so, the boy sees a man in the street who is the spitting image of his father.”

“Saudi Arabian director Haifaa Al-Mansour, who with Wadjda became the first female filmmaker in her country, is set to return to Saudi Arabia to shoot The Perfect Candidate, a drama with comedic elements about a young female physician who maneuvers through her conservative, male-dominated society to run in the municipal council elections.” Variety’s Nick Vivarelli has more.

Amandla Stenberg will star in Where Hands Touch, a love story set against the backdrop of World War II directed by Amma Asante (A United Kingdom). THR’s Rebecca Ford has more.

THR’s Danielle Garcia has a couple of first images from Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, in which “Ethan Hawke plays an ex-military chaplain who, after losing his son, befriends a woman (Amanda Seyfried) also suffering from the loss of her husband.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s told Screen’s Tom Grater that he’ll be starring in a new Terminator movie produced by James Cameron; that he, Danny DeVito, and Eddie Murphy are lined up for Triplets, a sequel to Twins (1986); and that a Conan reboot may be in the cards as well.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried will be back. Jeff Sneider has more at the Tracking Board.

Mel Brooks has not ruled out Spaceballs 2.Peter Martin has more at Movies.com.

Tom Cruise, in the meantime, has promised a Top Gun 2.Laurel Wamsley reports for NPR.

David Ayer (Fury) may take on what would be a third Scarface, report THR’s Mia Galuppo and Borys Kit.

Nick Love (The Sweeney) will write and direct a remake of Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950), reports Geoffrey Macnab for Screen.

According to AsiaWiki, Kim Ki-duk will direct Jang Keun-suk in Human Time (literal translation), which will, of course, “examine the boundary of ethics and morality in humans.”

Series

Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele “will be the executive producer behind Lovecraft Country, a just ordered drama series based around a Matt Ruff novel about a 1950s road trip through the Jim Crow South,” reports Maxwell Strachan for HuffPost.

For the New York Times,Jason Horowitz reports from Naples on a casting call for My Brilliant Friend, an eight-episode mini-series adapted from Elena Ferrante’s literary sensation. He also gets a few words with director Saverio Costanzo.

Ryan Murphy has cast Dennis Quaid as George W. Bush in Katrina: American Crime Story, reports James Hibberd for Entertainment Weekly.

Stephen Frears will direct Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe, “the first British politician to stand trial for conspiracy and incitement to murder,” in A Very English Scandal, reports Deadline’s Nancy Tartaglione.

“Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale,Top of the Lake) is teaming with BBC America and Annapurna Television to develop a limited series adaptation of period drama Fever based on Mary Beth Keane’s novel, with Moss set to star,” reports Denise Petski for Deadline. “Fever tells the story of the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever who became known as ‘Typhoid Mary’ as she spread typhoid across the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.”

“More than half a century after Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, and Burt Lancaster strutted down the Cannes red carpet for Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, plans are under way for an English-language TV adaptation of the classic novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa,” reports Variety’s Nick Vivarelli. The project is evidently still in its very early stages.

Vulture’s Jackson McHenry reports that Jon Stewart and HBO have abandoned plans to create a series of “Onion-like animated shorts” that’d riff on the news. “It turns out that the idea was too complicated to pull off effectively, according to the network, especially ‘given the quick turnaround and topical nature of the material.’”

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