But not doing Timecrimes remake
Filmmaker David Cronenberg is in New York City this week to premiere his new movie A Dangerous Method – his first in four years – at the New York Film Festival.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley, it’s an adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play “The Talking Cure,” which explores the relationship between psychology pioneers Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung and Sabina Spielrein.
In the four years since Eastern Promises, there’s been a lot of talk about various projects with Cronenberg’s name attached to a bunch of them, so when ShockTillYouDrop/ComingSoon.net sat down with the filmmaker earlier today, we took a couple minutes to ask about some of them.
The first rumor was that David Cronenberg was in talk to direct an English language remake of Nacho Vigalondo’s time-traveling festival fave thriller TimeCrimes, which was reported back in 2008, and according to Cronenberg is patently false:
“Timecrimes, that was a strange thing, but that’s what happens. They proposed it to me, I said ‘No,’ and then suddenly it was on the ‘net like I’m doing it, and I think the producer was so excited that I’d read it and look at their original movie that he started talking about it like it’s happening. Actually, I think it was the director of the Spanish version was responsible for saying I’m doing it, but I was never doing it.”
He then added something we’ve heard all too often, sadly:
“Sometimes on IMDB, you see you’re doing three movies you’ve never even heard of. They try to be accurate, but the ‘net is so intense and instantaneous and the sources are not checked.”
(Okay, maybe he’s right there, which is why we’re glad we did check with the source.)
The next thing we asked about were the 2009 rumors of Cronenberg rebooting The Fly for 20th Century Fox, having already done so once with his 1986 horror classic of the same name, which to date is still considered one of the only near-perfect horror remakes.
“‘The Fly’ is not exactly a remake, it’s sort of a sequel, kinda. Yeah, that was a thing. I’ve written a script of that, and I don’t know if that’s going to really happen, but that has to do with Fox.”
Lastly, another juicy rumor from 2009, this one involving Cronenberg wanting to revisit the Russian crime territory of Eastern Promises, something that was confirmed to us by Vincent Cassel, of all people, although Cronenberg remained a bit less gung-ho about it, though confirming it is in development:
“That is also possible. Steve Knight wrote an ‘Eastern Promises 2,’ he’s writing a second draft of that. Focus are interested in it, and we’ll see.”
Before the director tackles any of that, he’ll be finishing up his latest movie Cosmopolis, his first movie based on his own screenplay since 1999’s eXistenZ, this one an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel of the same name. Cronenberg is quite proud of the fact it only took him six days to write that screenplay, although it’s also likely to be a departure from his previous horror and crime-related films:
“The novel is so great and the dialogue in it is incredible and it’s very cinematic. Well, it is and isn’t. Most of the movie takes place inside a limo, so some people would say that’s not cinematic, but I say it is!
Oh, and the guy riding around in that limo is none other than Robert Pattinson, who is joined by the likes of Jay Baruchel, Paul Giamatti, Kevin Durand, Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Mathieu Amalric.
You can read the rest of our interview with Cronenberg, including some of his current impressions on the industry, over on ComingSoon.net closer to the release of A Dangerous Method on November 23.
(Photo Credit: Ian Wilson/WENN.com)
Source: Edward Douglas
