Suddenly, Danny Boyle has a lot of options on the table. With the director putting the finishing touches on the upcoming FX series “Trust,” it looks like he isn’t going to take much of a break. Recent weeks have seen him join the mix of contenders to direct “Bond 25,” and he’s even gone as far as to cook up an original story with John Hodge, who will be writing the script. However, yet another project is surfacing and it could take Boyle out of the running to directing Bond.
Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye has revealed that Boyle is set to direct a contemporary musical comedy about a struggling U.K. musician in the ’60s or ’70s. It’s an original concept, with a script coming from Richard Curtis (“Love Actually,” “War Horse,” “About Time“), and even more, THR says it could shoot this summer if casting (and everything else) manages to come together.
#DannyBoyle to direct contemporary film musical based on script by #RichardCurtis . Untitled movie is about a struggling UK musician. Film’s in development with @Working_Title & @UniversalPics though I hear it could be shooting pretty soon in UK. pic.twitter.com/CzPUpjfkLR
— Baz Bamigboye @Deadline (@BazBam) March 1, 2018
If you’re wondering how a musical could replace Bond, you’d need to understand that the genre is an itch that Boyle has been trying to scratch forever. Doing the rounds last year for “T2 Trainspotting,” Boyle was emphatic about how much he wanted to make a song and dance movie.
“A musical, oh yeah,” he said in March 2017. “For any director an original musical is the ultimate holy grail, absolutely. It’s the purest form of cinema. If you can get your characters to sing, absolutely believe it and go with it — that’s the ultimate degree of difficulty. That’s the top one.”
“My Fair Lady,” “Miss Saigon,” and even a movie using the music of David Bowie have all been attempted by Boyle as musical, but none of them came together. And even “Millions” was initially positioned as a musical before it changed creative directions.
“We were going to make a musical [with] the kids film we made ‘Millions,’ ” Boyle explained. “Because you look at the ingredients of it, that is a musical. But we chickened out of it. We were going to get Noel Gallagher to write the songs, I remember, and get the kids to sing and we chickened out of it. Me and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, we kept flirting with [the idea], but we lacked the confidence. Now I’d do it. If you come act across an idea like that? Because it has a beautiful simplicity to it that suits the musical. There’s something ultimately very hopeful to it.”
As for Bond, Boyle has previously said he’s “not the right guy for those,” however, he’s clearly still toying with directing “Bond 25” (it’s been reported that if the producers like the Boyle/Hodge script, the job would basically be his to take).
It’s certainly an interesting development, and we’ll just have to see how this one all plays out.
