Pattinson, Miyazaki, and More

Aafter talking with Robert Pattinson about his eagerness to work with Josh and Benny Safdie on Good Time and with James Gray on The Lost City of Z, IndieWire’s Chris O’Falt has gotten the actor to chat a bit about “a number of projects in various stages of development and post-production.” Pattinson’s just completed work in Cologne on High Life, a science fiction adventure and the first film in English from Claire Denis, who’s “the most authentic punk that I’ve even met in my life,” according to Pattinson. “She’s so tiny, and to me she’s the most definitive auteur I’ve ever worked with as well.” High Life is “just all over the place and I can’t waiting to see how she finds the throughline of everything, because it’s insane.”

In the image at the top, we see Pattinson with Mia Wasikowska in David and Nathan Zellner’s Damsel, “a feminist western comedy,” as he puts it, now headed to Sundance. And then there are three more that aren’t quite yet done deals:

• Antonio Campos’s The Devil All the Time, which, according to the IMDb, “follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s.”
• In Olivier Assayas’s Idol’s Eye, Pattinson would play “a thief who unknowingly steals a blue diamond from Chicago mob boss Tony Accardo,” played by Sylvester Stallone, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Roxborough. Pattinson: “Every few months it kind of reappears again, but I think it’s happening.”
• Ciro Guerra’s followup to Embrace of the Serpent will be Birds of Passage. Pattinson’s lined up for the one after that, an adaptation of J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, which Guerra’s told Screen’s Orlando Parfitt should be shot next year ahead of a 2019 release. Pattinson’s looking forward to working alongside Mark Rylance.

Studio Ghibli is “truly back in the feature business,” announces Gavin J. Blair in the Hollywood Reporter. While Hayao Miyazaki is at work on his hand-drawn Kimitachi wa do Ikiru ka (How Do You Guys Live?), which is “is understood to be inspired by the work of the Japanese children’s author Genzaburō Yoshino,” as Ignatiy Vishnevetsky notes at the A.V. Club, his son Goro Miyazaki (From Up on Poppy Hill) is planning a new computer-animated project—about which we know nothing more. Blair points out that Studio co-founder and producer Toshio Suzuki, “known over the years for making confusing statements about the studio, also hinted there were more films in the works. ‘Ghibli will keep making films. That is the true path for Ghibli. Continuing on is all we can do; until the day we are unable to do so. That is what I have resolved to do,’ said Suzuki.”

Ioncinema’s Eric Lavallée checks in on productions either currently shooting or “moments away from lensing”:

• Alistair Banks Griffin’s The Wolf Hour, which is “set during the 1977 New York blackout riots and sees Naomi Watts isolated in her Bronx home.”
• Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux with Rooney Mara and Jude Law.
• Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer with Nicole Kidman, Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Bradley Whitford, Scoot McNairy, and Tatiana Maslany.
• Peter Hedges’s Ben Is Back with his son Lucas and Julia Roberts.
• And Jia Zhangke’s working with cinematographer Eric Gautier on Ash Is Purest White.

“Quentin Tarantino’s still-untitled ninth film has a release date,” announces Variety’s Brent Lang. August 9, 2019 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles. “The director has told media outlets that it’s not a biopic, but is an ensemble film set during the tumultuous time period.”

Lang and Justin Kroll report that Alex Tse, who adapted Alan Moore’s Watchmen for Zack Snyder, will write a reboot of Superfly, “the 1972 classic, which starred Ron O’Neal as Priest, a cocaine dealer looking to score one more super deal and retire. The movie was directed by Gordon Parks Jr., the son of Gordon Parks, who directed another blaxploitation classic Shaft—one of the staples in the early years of the genre that took the ’70s by storm.”

James Franco will direct and star in a biopic based on the life of children's book author Shel Silverstein, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s Mia Galuppo. “Based on Lisa Rogak's book A Boy Named Shel, the movie will focus on the personal and professional struggles of the author behind the popular book The Giving Tree and collection of poems Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

Linda Cardellini has joined Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali in the cast of Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, reports Deadline’s Patrick Hipes. This is “the true story of Tony Lip, an Italian-American bouncer with a seventh-grade education who in 1962 was hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley, one of the world’s finest jazz pianists, on a concert tour from New York City through the pre-civil rights-era Deep South. The men relied on the Negro Motorist Green Book to guide them to the few motels, restaurants and gas stations they could use below the Mason-Dixon Line.”

Series

Conan O’Brien will executive produce Adam Reid’s Barry & Joe, in which Barack Obama and Joe Biden “not only pal around, making goofy dad jokes, but also travel through time to fight crime.” William Hughes has details at the A.V. Club.

As expected, “Netflix has formally ordered a second season of Mindhunter, its crime drama series executive produced by David Fincher and Charlize Theron,” reports Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva. And a third season for Stranger Things? Of course.

Talking with Spike Lee about his Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, based on his 1986 feature debut, Variety’s Debra Birnabaum asks, “Do you have any plans to turn any other movies into a TV show?” Lee: “I’ll tell you this, it won’t be Do the Right Thing.”

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