The last we heard about Steven Spielberg‘s potential Moses movie “Gods And Kings” was well over a year ago, when word circulated that he might be eyeing a start date this spring. But obviously a lot of things have happened since then. The director’s “Robopocalypse” started moving to follow “Lincoln” until he delayed it, essentially freeing up his summer, part of which he’ll spend as the Cannes Film Festival as the jury president, while also looking over newly tasked director Colin Trevorrow‘s work on “Jurassic Park IV.” And oh yeah, he’s also developing Stanley Kubrick‘s lost “Napoleon” project as a TV miniseries on top of the many other big and small screen efforts he has his hands in. And it appears that he won’t be parting the Red Sea any more.
Deadline reports that Spielberg has moved on, and Warner Bros. is now seeing recent Best Director Oscar winner Ang Lee to take over. It’s all very, very early and while there have be no formal meetings, Lee is apparently “intrigued.” Penned by Michael Green and Stuart Hazeldine (the former was a co-writer on “Green Lantern” along with creating “The River” for Spielberg on ABC; and the latter is behind the kiboshed WB flick “Paradise Lost“) the movie is described as a “Braveheart“-style telling of the story of Moses from birth to death. Undoubtedly, Lee has proven he can handle epic scale and this would be another new genre for the filmmaker to tackle, but his next confirmed outing will be something smaller. Much smaller.
Lee will make his TV directorial debut on FX, helming the pilot episode of “Tyrant.” The project, which is highly expected to be greenlit without having even shot a frame of footage yet, is from “Homeland” executive producers Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff and Craig Wright of “Six Feet Under” fame, and tells the story of an average American family, somehow becoming involved with the turbulent happenings in the Middle East. Hmm. It might seem like an odd move for Lee, but after spending a couple of years on the ambitious and intensive “Life Of Pi,” this might be a good palate cleanser and a way to dive back into the basic mechanics of directing without any extra fuss.
We’ll see if Lee ends up taking on “Gods and Kings,” but Warner Bros will likely want an answer soon as Ridley Scott has his own rival project brewing at Fox, which apparently could happen once he’s done with “The Counselor.” But as much as we’d like to believe that, dude has about five billion different potential things he could do next, so it’s probably a longshot threat at this point, but you would still want to be out of the gate first if possible.
