Danny Boyle Will Direct 'Trance' This Fall

Surprise! We'd thought that we wouldn't see a new film from Danny Boyle for some time (and we won't, but that is complicated and explained below) because he's been directing his stage version of Frankenstein and has a couple of little things to plan for the 2012 London Olympics. But now he has announced plans to make a small thriller called Trance, which will shoot in September before he really has to dive full-time into the Olympic work. We just won't see it until 2013.

Deadline relates that the film is about "an art heist gone wrong" and that it has the "dark, sexy, hard-edged tone of Boyle films like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting."

No cast is announced yet, but the thought of Danny Boyle going back to some old thriller ground — and perhaps reining in his increasingly manic style just a tad — is something that gives me a thrill. Shallow Grave is fairly raw and wild, and I don't expect a replication of that film, nor would I want one. But something in that vein that uses what he's learned and developed in the 15-plus years since? That I do want to see.

Talks are ongoing with Fox Searchlight and Pathe to fund and distribute the film, and given the relationship and deal Danny Boyle has with Fox Searchlight, I'd guess it's pretty much a lock that we'll see the company's logo on Trance in 2013.

Wait, 2013? Right — because after the primary shoot is done for Trance, he'll have to work on the Olympics well into 2012. So the film will be shot this year, then cut and finished in fall of 2012, and released in 2013. It's a weird process, and I'll be curious to see if he can edit the film, after taking nearly a year off from it, without wanting to go back and do a lot of extra/new shooting.