Exclusive: What’s going on in the world of filmmaker Steven Soderbergh these days? As usual, a little bit of everything. The director’s had two films arrive in theaters within the span of eight months—“Logan Lucky” last August and “Unsane” in March (plus the “Mosaic” TV series in January) — and his next film, “High Flying Bird,” the sports drama written by “Moonlight” scribe Tarell Alvin McCraney starring André Holland, Zazie Beetz, and Kyle MacLachlan, shot in February on the iPhone again, is already cut and essentially done. It’s another Fingerprint Releasing/Bleecker Street (like “Unsane” and Logan Lucky”), but the word I’m getting is that they’re likely going to give it a bit of time to breathe in between movies (though film festivals aren’t out of the question).
READ MORE: Steven Soderbergh Reteams With André Holland For ‘High Flying Bird,’ Eyes ‘Planet Kill’
Since the director can’t really take a proper vacation—his 2013 “retirement” lasted all of four months after Cannes and then he started shooting Cinemax’s “The Knick” — there’s always a film around the corner. However, one of those projects won’t be “Planet Kill,” the action thriller Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8 just acquired two months ago. Longtime collaborator Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion”) and James Greer (“Unsane,” also a former Guided By Voices member who once wrote the script to Soderbergh’s unmade musical “Cleopatra”) came up with the original story with the idea that filmmaker might direct. However, sources tell us Soderbergh’s definitely not going to go behind the camera for the movie, and will just serve as a producer.
What’s actually coming up next is Soderbergh’s adaptation of the Panama Papers story, based on the book “Secrecy World” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein. Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote “Side Effects” and “The Informant!,” has also penned the script. Now titled “The Laundromat,” the Panama Papers story is about the biggest leak of data in corporate and government history revealing a global system of undisclosed offshore accounts, money laundering, and other criminal activity. The title is a reference to Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm that laundered money for more than more than 200,000 offshore entities. The data leak in 2016 made global headlines. The movie’s been compared to the Academy Award-winner “Spotlight” as a journalistic exposé of illicit money, political corruption, and fraud on a global scale.
“The Laundromat” is gearing up for a fall shoot and there’s a powerhouse cast waiting in the wings, but that lineup is being held under wraps for now. There’s been some talk out there that Soderbergh could shoot on the iPhone again like he did on “Unsane,” but because of the epic scale of the movie, which will shoot in six countries, he’ll be back using the latest RED Cameras.
In related news, Burns’ next directorial effort, the CIA drama “The Torture Report” including Annette Bening, Adam Driver, and Jon Hamm, will shoot next week. It’s also a bit of a family affair as it’s being executive produced by Michael Sugar who also oversaw Soderbergh’s aforementioned TV series “The Knick.”
READ MORE: Steven Soderbergh And Writer Lem Dobbs Team Up Again For New Six-Part Series
Lastly, news leaked out of a new team-up with semi-regular collaborator Lem Dobbs (“The Limey,” “Haywire”) for an untitled six-part series. We’re told Dobbs and Soderbergh have been quietly been working on the project for a while now. It’s based on the life of Emin Pasha, a 19th-century adventurer/renaissance man who reinvented himself several times over. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds here. A German Jewish physician, naturalist, linguist, African explorer and colonial governor of Equatoria (a province of Egypt), Pasha lead an extraordinary life and according to Encyclopedia Britannica “contributed vastly to the knowledge of African geography, natural history, ethnology, and languages,”
Titled “Emin Pasha,” for now, the man lived so much life there are dozens of stories that could be spun from his life, but there is the semi-famous Emin Pasha Relief Expedition celebrated for its ambition in crossing darkest Africa, notorious for the deaths of many of its members and the disease unwittingly left in its wake. The project, we’re told, is probably far off, so don’t put it on the calendar just yet.
That’s it for now. FYI, he’s not wrong about “Atlanta.”
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