How’s this for a way to start the new year and decade? Ugh.
In a diary-type piece with British tabloid The Telegraph, director John Hillcoat has tragically revealed that his highly-anticipated dream project, “The Promised Land,” is no more.
Based on the Matt Bondurant novel “The Wettest County In The World,” Hillcoat’s depression era crime-drama was set to shoot in February and had already attracted the likes of Shia Labeouf, Ryan Gosling, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Dano, Amy Adams and Michael Shannon. We reviewed the script last November and described Nick Cave’s story as “remarkable, vivid and tactile.” Unfortunately, Hillcoat now announces that the film is dead in the water in an epilogue to his “The Road” production diary.
“The joke on set and in the edit suite was that we had to get [“The Road”] out before it became a reality. Ironically, the movie industry itself now faces its own apocalypse. The perfect storm has arrived in Hollywood: a global economic downturn combined with piracy and the increase of downloading on the internet – what happened to the record companies years ago but with much higher stakes. The reactionary first phase has kicked in – few films in development, many films put on hold or shut down.
My own new project – with a much-loved script by Nick Cave and a dream all-star cast – has fallen apart. The finance company that we began The Road with has also fallen apart, having to radically downsize to one remaining staff member. The great divide has begun, with only very low-budget films being made or huge 3-D franchise films – the birth of brand films such as Barbie, Monopoly: The Movie – who knows what’s next, Coca-Cola: The Movie?
I end the year appropriately – gazing into the apocalypse of my own industry.”
Before it even got the green light, we foresaw potential problems the project would face if left gestating until Hillcoat’s “The Road” hit theaters and predictably underwhelmed. The bleak tone and atmosphere of “The Promised Land” mirrors that of “The Road” so when audiences didn’t warm to that film, alarms probably were raised. That was surely the nail in the coffin to the already risky project backed by the shaky Millennium Films.
You’ve got to feel for Hillcoat who would have been licking his lips at the prospect of working the talents of Gosling, Labeouf and company. Furthermore, his pessimistic diary entry is a stark and brutal reminder of the state of the film industry which looks to only be receding further at the turn of the new decade.
With “The Promised Land” off his list, the director still has an adaptation of Nick Cave’s novel “The Death Of Bunny Munro” with UK TV in development, a Joe Petrosino film with Benicio Del Toro attached and Pete Dexter writing and a project titled “Mob Cops” with ‘Sopranos’ writer Terrence Winter in the works. The last two projects though sound awfully similar and could very well mean a one-or-the-other situation. On top of that, Hillcoat was also in talks to remake 1973 French heist film “La Bonne Annee” with ‘Road’ scribe Joe Penhall and actor Daniel Craig though nothing seems to live up to the potential of the gritty ‘Promised Land.’ Nevertheless, here’s to hoping someone takes a “risk” on the talented helmer soon.
