Earlier this fall, it was announced that Denis Villeneuve was in talks to helm “Cleopatra.” The film has essentially been stuck in development hell for years, with David Fincher at one point slated to direct Angelina Jolie in the adaptation of Stacy Schiff‘s “Cleopatra: A Life,” in its most high profile incarnation. It never came together and the project languished. However, now that it’s back to life, you might want to put away any preconceived notions you might have about this being a stuffy costume drama.
READ MORE: Denis Villeneuve Admits He’s Been In Contact About Next James Bond, But ‘Dune’ Is Next
While the famed empress was immortalized on the big screen in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s audacious 1963 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, screenwriter David Scarpa (“All The Money In The World“) tells THR his version of the story is taking a very different direction.
“It’s similar [to ‘All the Money in the World’] in that there’s a lot of research involved and there’s a question with all that of how do you want to do it and how do you make something new out of it? With Getty, part of the idea was to take two genres we felt we knew, which was the kidnapping genre and what we’ll call the ‘great man’ genre — the ‘Citizen Kane‘ genre — and smash them together and make something new out of them. With ‘Cleopatra’ … instead of doing the movie as the prestige picture — the three-hour, lots of pageantry, people with fans and English accents and all that stuff — [we] really treat it as a political thriller. Dirty, bloody, lots of people swearing and having sex and all of that other stuff and just treat it as a two-hour, lean, mean political thriller, full of assassinations, etc. Just going the opposite direction from the way we think that movie is going to go.”
Uh, wow, well we definitely weren’t expecting that take. I guess that’s what the trades meant when it was reported that the project was being “re-developed” as Villeneuve got involved. All that said, the movie still seems like it will be a way off yet, particularly as the director is jumping to “Dune” next. Still, this twist on “Cleopatra” could be just what the material needs.