When it was announced last week that "Listen Up Philip" and "Queen Of Earth" writer/director Alex Ross Perry was going to pen the live action "Winnie The Pooh" movie for Disney, the internet collectively (and rather ridiculously) went WTF. But the internet can be rest assured that Perry hasn’t completely abandoned complicated dramas —it turns out he has a pretty interesting project brewing.
Variety reports that Perry will write and direct an adaptation of Don DeLillo‘s 1982 novel "The Names." The story follows an investigation into a series of murders by a cult in the Middle East. Here’s the book synopsis:
Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Among the cast of DeLillo’s bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator’s estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neurotic narrator obsessed with his own neuroses. A thriller, a mystery, and still a moving examination of family, loss, and the amorphous and magical potential of language itself, The Names stands with any of DeLillo’s more recent and highly acclaimed works.
No word yet on where this project will fall on Perry’s timetable, but it’s one to keep an eye out for. The only other DeLillo movie adaptation to date is David Cronenberg‘s "Cosmopolis," and we’ll be eager to see the voice of the author channeled through another filmmaker.