It’s been four years since Kathryn Bigelow released "Zero Dark Thirty," and there have been a couple projects she’s looked at. For a while she was eyeing "Triple Frontier," which is now being helmed by J.C. Chandor, while a proposed movie about Bowe Bergdahl seems to have transitioned to a podcast on this season of "Serial" (which Bigelow collaborator and screenwriter Mark Boal worked on). But the good news is that the director now has a new project coming together fast.
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She’ll team with Annapurana for an untitled Detroit-set drama that will start filming this summer. No plot details have been released, but the film will be a true crime drama set in 1967 against the backdrop of the riots that shook Detroit, touching upon racism in urban parts of the city. Boal is penning the script.
Casting will get underway in the next couple of months, and it’ll surely attract some big names. Press release below.
LOS ANGELES, CA, JANUARY 28, 2016–Kathryn Bigelow will direct, as well as produce with Mark Boal and Annapurna’s Megan Ellison and Matthew Budman an as yet untitled true crime drama from an original screenplay by Mark Boal.
The feature, Oscar winning director Bigelow’s tenth as a director, is her, and her frequent collaborator Boal’s next up. Referred to at the moment as the “Untitled Detroit Project,” it is being financed by Annapurna Pictures, and is set to begin principal photography this summer.
Although details about the Detroit project are not being revealed at this time, it is a crime drama set against the backdrop of Detroit’s devastating riots that took place over five haunting summer days in 1967. Boal has been researching and working on the project, which explores systemic racism in urban Detroit, for more than a year. Although no studio is yet attached, a release date is being targeted for 2017, the 50th anniversary of the riots.
The project marks Boal’s first screenplay centering around domestic conflicts. His “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” both directed by Bigelow, were set in the Middle East.
Bigelow is a two time Oscar winner for producing and directing “The Hurt Locker.” Boal is a two time Oscar winner for producing and writing “The Hurt Locker.” Bigelow, Boal and Ellison’s previous collaboration, “Zero Dark Thirty,” received five Oscar nominations including best picture and best screenplay.