“Listed among the most anticipated films of 2015, Andrzej Żuławski’s Cosmos is now in post-production,” reports Mikołaj Gliński for Culture.pl, noting that it “comes some 15 years after Żuławski’s last film, La Fidelité (2000)” and “will most probably be ready for the Cannes Festival in May.” Based on Witold Gombrowicz’s novel, Cosmos is “described as a metaphysical thriller noir.” Gliński has helpfully translated selected passages from Tadeusz Sobolewski‘s recent interview with Żuławski in which the director discusses the challenge of the adaptation and explains (sort of) why he’s shifted the setting from the Poland of the 1930s to Portugal. “In Cosmos, through the obsessive recurrence of certain details, a parallel reality is formed, which is not entirely our own,” says Żuławski. “One could say that it is a mystical reality. And it is all in the form of a crime novel.” The piece features a couple of shots actress Clémentine Pons snapped on the set.
Speaking of Cannes, the Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy has been sorting contenders for the lineup by the likeliness of their being tapped by festival director Thierry Fremaux (and Neil Young is already placing odds on possible Palme d’Or winners). “Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the Palme d’Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recount His Past Lives in 2010, looks all but certain to return to the Croisette with Love in Khon Kaen,” suggests McCarthy and, as it happens, the new Film Comment features Giovanni Marchini Camia‘s fantastic report from the set:
One of Apichatpong’s regulars, Jenjira Pongpas, plays a middle-aged woman who tends to a soldier suffering from an incurable sleeping sickness, played by Banlop Lomnoi reprising his role from Tropical Malady. A tentative romance blossoms that can only be realized through an escape into dreams, but this oneiric idyll is threatened by sinister forces…. The 44-year-old director expects the film to represent a turning point in his oeuvre. “I’m at a stage where I doubt a lot about career and country. This movie is like a farewell. I have to make a movie to get away from old memories and try to build anew, maybe in a different country, maybe in a different form of filmmaking,” he said. “I’m sick of this place and this movie is a manifestation of this thinking.”
“An incurable tinkerer, Warren Beatty was at work again last weekend, shooting a scene for a 40-year passion project whose status is almost as mysterious as its subject: the industrialist Howard Hughes.” In the New York Times, Michael Cieply notes that Beatty began work on this project in 1976. He’s the writer, director, producer and star (alongside Lily Collins, Matthew Broderick, Martin Sheen, Annette Bening, Dabney Coleman, Candice Bergen and Oliver Platt) and evidently completed the bulk of the shooting nine months ago. It “may be nearing completion and could be ready for release this year.” A bit more:
In truth, according to one person briefed on the evolution of Mr. Beatty’s film, it has changed considerably with the years, and is no longer entirely about Howard Hughes.
Instead, this person said, it has become a somewhat lighthearted story about a young woman, played by Ms. Collins, who, like Mr. Beatty, was raised by Southern Baptists, and who—again, like Mr. Beatty—found her way to Hollywood in 1958. There, she is put under contract by Hughes, by then a film mogul. Together with another young arrival from the heartland, played by Alden Ehrenreich, she experiences the collapse of an old moral order and the rise of a new one in the early 1960s. Again, as Mr. Beatty did.
“Steve Martin is joining the cast of the Ang Lee-directed Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” reports Mike Fleming Jr. “The adaptation of the Ben Fountain novel starts shooting in April.”
Also at Deadline, Ali Jaafar: “Scott Rudin has acquired rights to Kazuo Ishiguro’s epic new novel The Buried Giant. The book, which has been ecstatically reviewed, follows a couple in a semi-historical Medieval Britain as they venture forth across a war-ravaged landscape in search of a son they haven’t seen in years. The story has fantasy elements, including a dragon, spectacular battle sequences and a panoramic backdrop.”
“Following a multiple-network bidding war, Netflix has picked up eight hourlong episodes of The OA, a drama from indie darlings and Sound of My Voice duo Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij.” Lesley Goldberg for the Hollywood Reporter: “The premise of the drama series is being closely guarded and kept under wraps, but Marling will star and co-write alongside Batmanglij, who will direct.”
“Jeremy Renner will star opposite Amy Adams in the sci-fi project Story of Your Life, with Denis Villeneuve directing,” reports Variety‘s Dave McNary. “The project, based on Ted Chiang’s story, centers on aliens landing on Earth. The military then recruits Adams’s linguistic expert to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat. Renner will portray a physics professor brought on to help communicate with the aliens.”
“Giovanni Ribisi is set for the title role in CBS’ drama pilot Sneaky Pete,” reports Deadline‘s Nellie Andreeva. “Marin Ireland will co-star in the project, written/executive produced by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston and House creator David Shore through Sony TV.”
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