The Matarese Circle
I never posted about David Cronenberg signing on to direct an adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s The Matarese Circle because of laziness and uncertain feelings about that career direction. Since he’s pretty much my favorite filmmaker, I scanned around for news today and found an update on that production. A couple weeks ago The Canadian Press talked to him and learned that not only is he directing the mainstream Hollywood spy film, he’s also writing it. That’s the first of his films he’s written since 1999’s eXistenZ. That instantly revives my interest, ’cause that indicates a real devotion to making something special. This won’t just be a paycheck.
Denzel Washington is the only actor currently attached to the project, but The Canadian Press also confirmed that Cronenberg had met with Tom Cruise, not necessarily about this movie, but both expressed an interest in working together. The novel follows American and Russian agents during the Cold War who put that conflict aside to go after a third party that poses danger to both factions. If that paradigm isn’t changed to use different nations or anything, I’m pulling for Viggo Mortensen to play the Russian, after he amazed as the Russian mobster in Eastern Promises. Plus, between that film and A History of Violence, the two have a great working relationship. Mortensen has also said they’ve discussed another project, but is it this one?
David Cronenberg
In other news, I am completely ashamed to have missed this information for so long, but David Cronenberg is writing a novel! That fact alone probably makes it my most anticipated novel, sliding in front of whatever William Gibson is now working on. Titled Consumed, the manuscript is expected to be turned in later in the year, perhaps soon enough for publishing in the autumn. The Independent describes the plot as:
revolv[ing] around a married couple, who are investigative journalists working on two separate stories. The wife is in Paris, delving into a bizarre crime where a woman has been killed and possibly eaten, and whose husband has also apparently disappeared.
The journalist’s husband is elsewhere in Europe, writing about a new treatment for cancer devised by a renegade doctor. His unorthodox methods involve planting radioactive nodes near the cancerous cells.
Mark Richards, the novel’s editor, says “it’s exactly what you would hope for from a Cronenberg novel” and that “it has that slightly uneasy dark feeling but also has a funny tone that his films share.”
It seems Mr. Cronenberg has really gotten back to the writing grind. As he told The Canadian Press, “the winter is good for writing.”
