In the Works: Soderbergh, Aronofsky, and More

The Tracking Board’s Jeff Sneider broke the news and Variety’s Justin Kroll confirms it. Steven Soderbergh has secretly shot a film with Claire Foy and Juno Temple on an iPhone. The title seems to be all that’s known about it so far: Unsane.

Mystery also shrouds a project written by Joe Epstein to be directed by Darren Aronofsky. It’s an as-yet-untitled “courtroom drama centered around artificial intelligence,” according to, again, Jeff Sneider. Aronofsky’s Mother! with Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeifer, Kristen Wiig, and Domhnall and Brian Gleeson opens in October.

Tony Kushner tells Tim Teeman at the Daily Beast about the play he’s writing about President Trump (“I think he is seriously mentally ill”) and mention is made of the four screenplays he’s currently working on as well. Two are for Steven Spielberg, for whom he wrote Munich (2005) and Lincoln (2012). Besides The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortera with Mark Rylance and Oscar Isaac, which Teeman notes is “about the Vatican’s imprisoning of a six-year-old boy in 1858,” Kushner is also “rewriting the book, ‘not the score,’ for a remake of West Side Story. ‘I am not touching in any way the greatest score of a musical ever written.’” The other two are He Walked Like a Man “for Plan B, Brad Pitt’s film company” and “a film about the politician and civil rights icon Barbara Jordan for Viola Davis.”

“A24 has landed worldwide distribution rights to Lady Bird, the comedy that marks the directorial debut of Greta Gerwig,” reports Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. Saoirse Ronan will play “a Sacramento teenager seeking to escape her small town to attend college in New York City.”

The cast for Tim Burton’s live-action remake of Dumbo for Disney is set, reports Collider’s Dave Trumbore: Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, and in their first onscreen roles, Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins.

Quentin Dupieux (Rubber,Reality) will direct Benoît Poelvoorde, Grégoire Ludig, Anaïs Demoustier, and rapper Orelsan in Au poste, reports Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa. “The storyline, written by Dupieux himself, is still being kept under wraps by the producers, but as the title suggests, the plot will unfold in a police station and will apparently revolve around a murder case that needs to be solved and a man who has been wrongfully accused.” Shooting starts in September.

Replacing Natalie Portman, Felicity Jones “will star as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the biopic On the Basis of Sex, with shooting starting in Montreal in September,” reports Variety’s Dave McNary. “Mimi Leder is directing from Daniel Stiepleman’s script, which was named to the 2014 Black List and detailed the numerous obstacles in her fight for equal rights throughout her career.”

Also, Alysia Reiner, Christina Hendricks, and Anna Camp will star in the “motherhood comedy Egg . . . Marianna Palka will direct from a script by Risa Mickenberg, author of Taxi Driver Wisdom.”

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