Whether it’s the run-up to Cannes or mere coincidence, there’s been an unusually high number of stories on projects worthy of note since just yesterday’s briefing. First up: “Terence Davies’s movie version of Scottish author Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 classic novel Sunset Song has begun its location shoot in Scotland.” Stuart Kemp in the Hollywood Reporter: “Billed as an intimate epic, Davies’s much-anticipated film stars Agyness Deyn (Pusher), Peter Mullan (War Horse) and Kevin Guthrie (Sunshine on Leith). The novel is widely regarded as one of the most important works in Scottish literature.” And Bob Last of SellOutPictures says: “Our ambition for the film and the opportunity to capture the grandeur of the Scottish landscape drove the use of 65mm film, a first for Scotland and an exciting addition to Terence’s pallette.”
“Joshua Oppenheimer is now busy in production on The Look of Silence, his follow-up to The Act of Killing,” reports Wendy Mitchell at Screen Daily. “While The Act of Killing followed the perpetrators from Indonesia’s death squads, the new film is about the victims. The Look of Silence will be edited in May and post-production will be done in June and July, for a launch at autumn festivals.” Noel Murray has more on The Look of Silence at the Dissolve.
Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) “has signed on to co-write and direct The Snowman which is based on the Jo Nesbo novel of the same name,” reports Ken Guidry at the Playlist. “This project was originally on Martin Scorsese’s plate, but his busy schedule forced Universal to start looking elsewhere (though he’ll stick around as an executive producer).”
“Sunray Films, the new sales-production company of Alison Thompson, is teaming with James Schamus and Stefan Arndt’s Berlin-based X Filme on a big-screen English-language adaptation of celebrated anti-Nazi novel Alone in Berlin,” reports Variety‘s John Hopewell. “The last book of German novelist Hans Fallada, written in 1947—and dubbed by Primo Levi as the greatest book ever-written about resistance to the Nazi regime—and overlooked for years until its reissue a decade again, Alone in Berlin turns on an ordinary working-class couple whose son in killed on the front during World War II.”
The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody on Terence Davies’s The Long Day Closes (1992); and you can now preorder Michael Koresky’s book, Terence Davies
Jean-Paul Belmondo will look back on some of the highlights of his life for a doc set to air on France’s TF1 in 2015, reports Brian Clark at Twitch. Belmondo’s interviewer will be his son, Paul, and “the film is actually being pitched as a road movie in which Belmondo Jr. and Sr. will travel to the countries where some of Belmondo’s most famous films were made, including Brazil, Monaco and Rome.”
“The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper is to reunite with Birdsong actor Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl, an adaptation of the novel by David Ebershoff about pioneering transgender artist Einar Wegener.” Andrew Pulver reports for the Guardian.
“Following her directing of Sundance comedy Obvious Child, Gillian Robespierre has been tapped to helm an untitled divorce comedy for OddLot Entertainment,” reports Variety‘s Dave McNary. Also: “Christopher Plummer has come on board the thriller Remember with Atom Egoyan directing. Martin Landau, Dean Norris, Bruno Ganz, Heinz Lieven and Gunter Lamprecht will also star.”
Gavin Hood will direct Colin Firth in Eye in the Sky, an “international thriller set in the shadowy world of remotely piloted ‘drone’ warfare,” reports Leo Barraclough in Variety.
“Screenwriter and actor Danny Strong [Lee Daniels’ The Butler] will make his directorial debut with Salinger’s War, a film based on the life of famed author J.D. Salinger.” Pamela McClintock and Rebecca Ford have more in the Hollywood Reporter.
Even the New Yorker feels obligated to post an entry on the cast for the new Star Wars episode coming our way. Yesterday’s announcement came with a photograph that, while it certainly won’t come close to being the most reproduced photo on record, may have made some sort of mark for the sheer speed of its proliferation.
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