Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (“RoboCop,” “Total Recall,” “Elle“) will finally debut his erotic lesbian nun drama “Benedetta” at the Cannes Film Festival this week, following a year of waiting around for the COVID-19 pandemic to subside.
During the pandemic, the director seemingly had a lot of time to consider his next couple of movies. Verhoeven has revealed to Variety that he’ll be returning to an American setting with an untitled spy thriller that takes place in Washinton D.C.; however, he didn’t elaborate further with any plot details. He also reiterated a plan to make a feature adaptation of his book “Jesus of Nazareth.”
“I’m developing a couple of projects. One is an American movie — a spy thriller that’s going to be set in Washington. I’m also going to make a movie based on my book about Jesus,” the filmmaker said to Variety when asked about his upcoming projects.
Here is the official synopsis of that book:
“Building on the work of biblical scholars—Rudolph Bultmann, Raymond Brown, Jane Schaberg, and Robert Funk, among others—filmmaker Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout history—human beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes. Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place, Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethic in which the embrace of human contradictions transcends the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus.”
Verhoeven has tackled the spy genre in the past. They include his WWII-set Dutch resistance films “Solider Of Orange” (1977) starring the late Rutger Hauer (“Blade Runner,” “Ladyhawke,” “Flesh & Blood“) and Carice van Houten‘s (“Game of Thrones,” “Valkryie“) big breakout film “Black Book” (2006). The latter was the Dutch submission for the Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film category in 2007 but failed to be nominated.
It’ll be interesting to see his take with this new spy thriller, considering he’s mostly tackled the genre during WWII and see another setting and era explored, given his extensive experience with action films.