Two indie filmmakers who have been hustling recent projects—Cary Fukunaga got a fist bump from Idris Elba who’ll produce and star in his “Beasts Of No Nation,” while Joe Swanberg‘s “Drinking Buddies” pushes him to his biggest audience yet—are now dipping their toes into studio waters.
First up, Fukunaga has been tapped by DreamWorks to helm “Noble Assassin,” which will certainly see him tackling something with a bigger scope and scale. The studio has snapped up a book proposal by Paul Kix that will tell the “wartime story of French aristocrat-turned-anti-Nazi-Saboteur Robert de la Rochefoucauld, who joined the British Special Operations Executive and was trained in every manner of dark arts before being sent back to France to help organize the resistance, blowing up train stations and munitions factories, enduring months of torture and escaping his own execution.” Yes, Rochefoucauld was a real dude and his story sounds kind of amazing. Sort of a “Monument Man” or something? The book will be published by HarperCollins, but we presume the movie is a ways off yet.
Meanwhile, Swanberg is continuing to raise his profile. “I didn’t want to spend my entire career working with unknown actors and friends,” he recently told Indiewire about the drive behind ‘Buddies,’ and now he’s going to indie powerhouse Fox Searchlight where he can likely attract a few more big names. The studio has snapped up a pitch for a comedy he’ll write and direct, and while there are no plot details, it’s said it’ll follow in his vein of romantic/relationship flicks. [Deadline]
