UPDATE: Jeff Sneider of TheWrap.com posts on Twitter that Aronofsky has not yet received an actual offer to direct The Sparrow. The original post follows.
Darren Aronofsky is still finishing post-production work on his biblical epic Noah (3/28/14) starring Russell Crowe in the title role, but now Deadline reports he’s in early talks to develop and direct Red Sparrow, an adaptation of the Jason Matthews spy novel for 20th Century Fox and producers’ Steve Zaillian and Garrett Basch’s Film Rites.
Here’s the synopsis from publisher Simon & Schuster:
In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.
As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and–inevitably–forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.
Deadline also mentions a possible George Washington project, which sounds to me like something far more likely than this, which sounds rather pedestrian when it comes to Aronofsky whose projects are typically a little more meaty than a simple book adaptation. I like to imagine it’s the reason he bounced from directing The Wolverine because he wasn’t cool with just doing another comic book movie that ended with a giant robot.
If I was placing a bet, I’d bet against him directing this.
