As the film award circus continues, Darren Aronofsky is beginning to develop The Wolverine, a Japan-set story based on the Marvel Comics X-Men character. But what we didn’t know is, this isn’t the only comic book movie Aronofsky is currently developing. In a recent interview, Darren revealed that he is “doing a comic book of a script that’s really hard to make and we’re going to do a comic version first and see what happens.”
It seems like Darren is trying to use the world of graphic novels as a backdoor into getting the movie made. And this wouldn’t be the first time that Aronofsky has turned to the world of comics. His initial version of The Fountain was released in graphic novel form by Vertigo Comics in 2005 after Brad Pitt left the project high and dry. Which project could this possibly be for? We try to figure it out, after the jump.
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When Darren Aronofsky was 13-years-old, he won a United Nations poetry competition at his Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn school for a poem about the end of the world as seen through the eyes of Noah. And so started Aronofsky’s obsession with the biblical figure. In September we talked to Aronofsky about his idea for a film based on Noah:
“It’s the end of the world and it’s the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I’m not sure why any studio won’t want to make it,” said Aronofsky. “I think it’s really timely because it’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He’s a really interesting character. Hopefully they’ll let me make it.”
Now Aronofsky tells RopesofSilicon that they have a “big movie star” attached, but wouldn’t reveal his name.
“We have a script actually, it is a script but there is more work to do. We’re actually going to do a graphic novel of it right now, we’re just starting it, and we’re hiring a writer,” Aronofsky said. “Eventually we’ll set it up, but we’re just figuring it out. It’s a very difficult film to get made and we’re slowly working on it to get it put together.”
This isn’t the first time that Aronofsky has turned to the world of comics. His initial version of The Fountain was released in graphic novel form by Vertigo Comics in 2005 after Brad Pitt left the project high and dry. Speaking of which, last week Darren told MTV that he would like to revisit The Fountain, and create an alternative cut with “with the addition of unused footage from the first go-round.” We, like many others were confused. Thankfully FirstShowing was able to talk to Aronofsky further about the idea.
“It’s something more for fans. I worked on the film for 6 years and it went through a lot of versions. And there was one version that was much closer to one of the scripts that we had. And we kind of chose between which way we would go with it and they both are kind of interesting. So I was always curious for myself to see what that alternative version would be. And we cut it actually recently, it’s done.” … “It’s very similar but it’s looking at a few things in a few different ways and answers a few questions for people and raises some new questions in other ways.”
The Fountain underperformed at the box office but has been gaining traction on DVD/Blu-ray. Hopefully Warner Bros might see enough demand to warrent a special edition release complete with alternative cut.
In this episode of the /Filmcast, Dave, Devindra and Adam discuss Darren Aronofsky’s latest project, Noah, assess Fox’s terrible summer movie season, and try to determine where Burn After Reading fits in the Coen brother’s filmography. Eric D. Snider joins in to review the film as well.
Have any questions, comments, concerns, feedback, or praise? E-mail us at slashfilmcast@gmail.com or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993 . Join us next Monday as we review Lakeview Terrace with Dan Trachtenberg from the Totally Rad Show.
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In this week’s three part interview with Darren Aronofsky, the filmmaker shared some new details on his long in the works religious epic Noah. I’ve been getting e-mails all morning from /Film readers wanting to know more, so I thought I’d bring you a history of everything we know about the project.
The idea originated ten years ago, even before Pi, when Aronofsky saw a museum exhibit. But the director’s fascination with Noah’s Ark began when he was only 13-years-old. Aronofsky won a United Nations poetry competition at his Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn school. The poem was about the end of the world as seen through the eyes of Noah. When Brad Pitt abruptly left The Fountain just weeks before principal photography, Aronofsky took some time off and began to develop a variety of different projects, one of them being the Noah screenplay. Aronofsky told The Guardian in April 2007:
“Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk. It’s there in the Bible – it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor’s guilt going on there. He’s a dark, complicated character. The tragedies we perform on each other are so well reported. Quite clearly, the planet is dying, and we are dying on it.”
And today we learned in the third part of our exclusive interview, that Darren wrote the screenplay with Fountain co-writer and college friend Ari Handel.
“We have an amazing screenplay,” Aronofsky told /Film. “It’s a great script and it’s HUGE. And we’re starting to feel out talent. And then we’ll probably try and set it up.”
Big and Huge are the words Aronofsky uses to describe the non-traditional English language biblical epic. But what gets me excited is Aronofsky’s passionate pitch:
“It’s the end of the world and it’s the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I’m not sure why any studio won’t want to make it,” said Aronofsky. “I think it’s really timely because it’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He’s a really interesting character. Hopefully they’ll let me make it.”
Is anyone in Hollywood reading this? Someone needs to get this into development ASAP.
sources: /Film, Guardian, CHUD
Darren Aronofsky is the director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. His latest film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and was bought by Fox Searchlight the morning after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (You can read my review here). Earlier this week, I was granted the chance to sit down with Aronofsky for a half hour interview. You can read the first part and the second part of the interview at the provided links. Enjoy.
Peter Sciretta: Speaking of boxing. What’s going on with The Fighter?
Darren Aronofsky: We have a beautiful screenplay. It’s based on, you probably know, Mickey Ward. It’s a great great project. As I told you I love sports movies. Rudy and Chariots of Fire are some of my favorite films. Fighter is a great script. Scott Silver wrote it. He’s the guy who wrote Eight Mile. So we have a great script, we’re just trying to cast it and try and figure out how it’s going to get made.
Peter Sciretta: So right now is it kind of on the back burner? Last I heard that Mark Wahlberg was training?
Darren Aronofsky: Mark is training. Mark’s totally gung-ho, he just sent me text that he wants to see [the Wrestler] this week. So I guess I’ll set up a screening for him in L.A. He’s totally gung-ho and I think it’s a great project. It’s been in development so long there’s a lot of money against it already. They’re trying to figure that out but I’m ready to go on it.
Peter Sciretta: And when I first saw the rumors Robocop I was like “No way! This can’t be rea!?”
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