Jon Watts has entered negotiations with Warner Bros. to “re-develop” and direct Methuselah with star Michael B. Jordan, according to Deadline.
WB is also actively seeking a writer to come in and rewrite Tony Gilroy’s screenplay. The Michael Clayton writer/director hopped aboard the project in 2017 with tentative plans to direct, but obviously his iteration never came to fruition. Now, Watts will get a chance to spearhead the production with one of Hollywood’s hottest rising stars in tow.
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For those unaware, Watts previously directed Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, and is deep in post-production on its sequel, Spider-Man: Far from Home, due out this summer. Prior to Spidey, Watts directed Cop Car and the thriller Clown, along with a number of short films.
Methuselah takes its name from the Biblical character Methuselah, who was said to have lived over 900 years. In a similar way, Jordan’s central character would be centuries old in spite of looking relatively young. He would be a highly-skilled survivor who also possesses impressive intelligence as a result of his long life allowing him to accumulate more knowledge than the average human.
Not much else is known at this time about the film. In the years that Methuselah has been in development, a number of writers and actors have gone in and out of the project’s metaphorical revolving door. Tom Cruise, who has experienced impressive longevity as an action star, was previously attached.
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Though Jordan has not yet reached the star power of Cruise, his meteoric rise is without question. His three biggest films Creed, Black Panther and Creed II have all come in the last four years and altogether brought in more than a billion and a half dollars at the box office. An undeniable rising star like Jordan may indeed be enough to finally get this project out of development purgatory and into production.
Beyond the film in question, Jordan has a lot on the horizon. His production company Outlier Society will be producing a “creature feature” set in Detroit, Michigan directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the filmmaker behind Kong: Skull Island. Jordan is also playing a role in a number of upcoming films, including a courtroom drama titled Just Mercy alongside Jamie Foxx and Captain Marvel‘s Brie Larson and the Denzel Washington-directed Journal for Jordan. He will also be playing CIA operative John Clark in the forthcoming Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse, which is set for a September 18, 2020 release.
