Put another one up on the board for Michael Mann. Barely 24 hours after it was revealed that he added the cop thriller "The Big Stone Grid" to his plate, it seems the director has another project that he's also taking a look at, while giving a slight update on one we haven't heard about in a while.
Mann recently visited "Tavis Smiley" over at PBS (thanks for the heads up Christian!) to talk about his HBO series "Luck," but also provided an update on what he's looking at on the feature film front. "I just got back from doing research on [a film] that a man named Alex Sage is writing in Indonesia. It’s all going to take place on the South China Sea, called 'The Tam,' " he said. That's about all the detail there is as of yet on the project, and it's clearly pretty early days, but we think the title may refer to Tam Kung, a sea god worshipped in Hong Kong and Macau. But again, that's just a guess on our part.
And while his next feature film hasn't yet been decided (though it's been suggested it wil be the racing pic "Go Like Hell"), it does seems that a period film is an itch he badly wants to scratch. "[I'm] developing something that takes place in 1415, culminates in the Battle of Agincourt. I love medieval subject matter. I’ve been dying to do something of the period," he also added in the interview.
This project has been brewing for a while now. "Agincourt" is an adaptation of the Bernard Cornwell novel that retells the famous battle between Henry V's English army and the French, which Mann was first developing with "Elizabeth" and "The Tudors" writer Michael Hirst. Last spring it was announced that "RKO 281" director Benjamin Ross was re-writing the script, and once the project was fully developed it would go out to studios for full financing. But it seems they aren't there just yet.
So we'll have to wait and see what eventually takes the pole position for Mann to put in front of cameras. For now, you can watch the entire interview below.
Watch Writer-director-producer Michael Mann on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.
