After delivering two films (and, indeed, two plays) in a six month period in late 2008/early 2009, Sam Mendes hasn’t had the best of luck this year, it seems. He dropped out of “Preacher,” watched as the Bond film he was set to direct stalled over MGM’s financial situation, and he found himself competing with the useless likes of Adam Shankman and Timur Bekmambetov for the chance to helm Disney’s “Oz The Great and Powerful.”
Deadline is reporting this evening, however, that Mendes has picked his next project, telling Disney he now no longer wants to be considered for the Oz prequel (and based on what we’ve read in the past couple of days, thank Christ for that — but that’s for another day…), instead taking on an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed 2007 novel “On Chesil Beach” for Focus Features.
McEwan’s work is pretty ripe for adaptation, and films based on his work have been relatively successful, for the most part, from “The Comfort of Strangers” and “The Cement Garden” to “Enduring Love” and “Atonement.” The novelist will adapt his own novel, which focuses on a young honeymooning couple in the early 1960s and their hopes and fears over the upcoming consummation of their marriage. Furthermore, Carey Mulligan appears to be in talks to star as Florence, the sexually repressed young violinist who makes up half of the couple.
There’s no denying that this’ll be a tricky adaptation job; the book is decidedly a minor work, and is both structurally tricky (much of the ‘narrative,’ as it were, is made up of the memories of the central couple), and extremely sexually explicit, so it’s a brave move on Focus’ behalf to back it. It’d also mark something of a recurring theme for Mendes, whose last two films (and the lesser of his works so far), “Revolutionary Road” and “Away We Go,” were also intimate studies of marriage. We look forward to the ‘Mendes Marriage Trilogy’ Blu-ray boxset, then…
The same story also reveals that Mendes will direct a stage musical version of “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory,” which will premiere in London at the end of next year with songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and a book by David Greig. Surprisingly, considering his busy dance card, Deadline also says that Mendes “remains committed” to the Bond film, although the two new projects seem like a tacit acknowledgement that, if Mendes remains attached, it won’t go before cameras until 2012 at the earliest.
