For Brian De Palma fanatics, it's been an agonizingly long wait for another sexy, stylish spellbinder. His last feature was 2007 incendiary "Redacted," which was a noble failure, but a failure just the same. Honestly, we can only watch our Criterion "Blow Out" Blu-rays so many times. Thankfully, word comes down from Anne Thompson that his new movie, "Passion," a loose remake of the recent French thriller "Love Crime," has picked up a cast member and set a date for principle photography.
Rachel McAdams is close to joining her "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" costar Noomi Rapace in the film, which is set to start principle photography March 5th in Berlin. Two of the original "Love Crime" participants are back for the remake – producer Ben Said Ben and SBS Productions. The movie is budgeted at a tiny $20 million (is this really the kind of money one of this country's greatest living directors can muster?) and instead of being about an older woman who takes revenge on her protege, this one is about a woman who, according to Thompson, "turns murderess when her boss steals her idea." Me-ouch!
This will now take precidence over the already-announced "The Key Man," written by "All You Need Is Kill" scribe Joby Harold, which was about a single father who discovers the key to national secrets is hidden within his body. That project, for QED Productions, was supposed to start at the end of the year. The Thompson report says that De Palma had been prepping "Key Man" but will move over to "Passion" immediately. Guess this is why you develop multiple projects at once.
Not only does "Passion" seem like a more exciting project because it fits more snugly in the erotic suspense wheelhouse (and, honestly, "Key Man's" concept sounds kind of dopey), but it's also a movie that De Palma will write and direct. Almost all of his certifiable masterpieces were written and directed by De Palma – "Phantom of the Paradise," "Body Double," "Dressed to Kill," "Blow Out." The Thompson report offers a quote that De Palma gave a reporter about the "Passion" project, saying, "Not since 'Dressed to Kill' have I been able to combine eroticism, suspense, mystery, and murder into one spell-binding experience. I can't wait." Neither can we, Brian, neither can we.