The moviemaking business is alive and well, and somehow giving several talents the greenlight in a 24-hour span. Ranked in order of interest, from best to good-enough:
The Hollywood Reporter reports (from Hollywood) that Lily Gladstone and Martin Scorsese will reunite via Charlie Kaufman: the latter has written The Memory Police, an adaptation of Yoko Ogawa’s acclaimed sci-fi novel which the Best Actress nominee will lead and Scorsese is executive-producing. Reed Morano (I Think We’re Alone Now) is taking directing duties on the film, somehow both Kafkaesque and Orwellian, as the official synopsis suggests:
On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss.
Expect more details as the film shops around.
Meanwhile, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon will make their 46th-or-so reunion on Animals, a Netflix-financed feature written by Connor McIntyre and scrubbed-up by Billy Ray. It has only been described as a kidnapping thriller, and with production set for this year (before Affleck, somehow, leads a sequel to The Accountant) we should have more details before long. [Deadline]
Deadline also has word of a nifty Australian pairing: Justin Kurzel will direct Nicole Kidman in Mice, an adaptation of Gordon Reece’s novel. Shaun Grant will script the feature, which (judging from the publisher’s description) befits Kurzel’s steely sensibilities:
Shelley and her mom have been menaced long enough. Excused from high school where a trio of bullies nearly killed her, and still reeling from her parents’ humiliating divorce, Shelley has retreated with her mother to the quiet of Honeysuckle Cottage in the countryside. Thinking their troubles are over, they revel in their cozy, secure life of gardening and books, hot chocolate and Brahms by the fire. But on the eve of Shelley’s sixteenth birthday, an unwelcome guest disturbs their peace and something inside Shelley snaps. What happens next will shatter all their certainties-about their safety, their moral convictions, the limits of what they are willing to accept, and what they’re capable of.
Finally Cineuropa tells us László Nemes has found his follow-up to 2018’s Sunset, and seemingly a continuation of his focus on intensely personal trips through crucial historic junctures. Even as details on Orphan are scant one can make auteurist connections from the promise of a film that “will follow a young boy in Budapest in 1957, one year after the Hungarian Revolution, which saw a failed uprising against the USSR.” Being that financing has just come through, expect a minute or so until we learn more.