Charlie Kaufman remains one of the most self-referential and surreal filmmakers working today, but when it comes to his directorial efforts, they’ve been few and far between. Five years after his Oscar-nominated stop-motion film “Anomalisa,” Kaufman returns this year with “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” which Netflix will release later this year, and Kaufman says he approached the project as his last directorial effort.
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In an extensive profile by The New York Times, Kaufman talked about his first novel, “Antkind,” which sounds just about as surreal as you’d expect from Kaufman, and his upcoming Netflix film. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is written and directed by Kaufman, and is a phantasmagorical thriller about a young couple — played by Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley, driving through a snowstorm in Oklahoma. Though the profile paints Kaufman as proud of the film, the filmmaker describes the project as “odd, small and a little complicated” and not the type of project that could give his career any big upswing. Indeed, the filmmaker said, “I honestly approached it as my last directing job.”
Though Kaufman has been nominated for four Oscars and won one for screenwriting, he hasn’t had many opportunities to direct. The profile recounts how Kaufman developed several ideas for television that led nowhere, and had to take screenwriting jobs to pay his mortgage, including some uncredited work on the “Kung Fu Panda 2” script. Most recently, Kaufman took a job adapting a short story for Ryan Gosling‘s production company, though the profile doesn’t give a title.
Amongst Kaufman’s biggest unproduced projects is “Frank or Francis,” a musical Kaufman worked on for nearly a decade which was going to be a musical “about an internet troll’s deranged feud with a film director” which was said to include 50 original songs and had Steve Carell, Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Nicolas Cage, Emma Thompson, Kevin Kline, Elizabeth Banks and Catherine Keener attached. Now, if only Netflix would pitch in and finance this next.