You might have forgotten, but in 2011 Cameron Crowe dropped three movies after being absent from the big screen for six years: the Matt Damon dramedy "We Bought a Zoo" and two music documentaries, "The Union" and "Pearl Jam Twenty." And heading into 2012, he isn't slowing down one bit. At the end of last month, his once-aborted romantic comedy "Deep Tiki" came back to life over at Sony with Emma Stone attached, and now he's got two more projects brewing that he'll tackle once that picture is in the can.
The Wrap reveals that the drug addiction memoir "Beautiful Boy" is being prepped as Crowe's followup effort to "Deep Tiki." This one has been in the works for a while as well, and in early 2011 it was reported that Crowe's adapation of David Sheff's memoir — which chronicled his son's meth addiction — was rejected by Brad Pitt's Plan B shingle due to the fact that Sheff apparently didn't like the way he was portrayed. Well, whatever may or may not have happened at Plan B or with Sheff, it's now moving along.
Paramount has dropped out, but Plan B is still on board with Crowe writing and directing, not only tackling "Beautiful Boy" but rolling in the experiences from "Tweak," Nic Sheff's memoir from his perspective about his own battle with drugs. It's undoubtedly a shift into some heavier dramatic territory for Crowe, but it's also exciting as well. Music heads likely already know the title refers to the song John Lennon wrote for his son Sean in 1980. Sheff says he was inspired to have his own family after interviewing the Beatle; it was Lennon's last interview before he was assassinated.
And as you usually can't talk Crowe without music, it should be no surprise that he's being courted to adapt Michael Chabon's upcoming novel, "Telegraph Avenue," for HBO. It's kind of a no-brainer. Set in the summer of 2004 against the backdrop of the Bush/Kerry elections, the story follows two pals, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe, who run Brokeland Records specializing in vinyl and find their enterprise threatened by a big box chain opening down the street. If this isn't perfectly suited to Crowe's wheelhouse, we don't know what is. And certainly, with the music industry in free fall at the time, there are a lot interesting ingredients that could make for a killer HBO show or movie. It's not yet confirmed if he'll tackle this, but we hope he does.
All of which is to say, lots of Crowe on the horizon and we're glad it won't be another six-year wait for a film.