With the gruelling task of directing every episode of HBO‘s stellar “True Detective” now behind him, director Cary Fukunaga is jumping right back into features. Next month he kicks off production on the child soldier drama “Beasts Of No Nation” starring Idris Elba, and the filmmaker is already looking beyond that movie, signing up for another project to write and direct.
Fukunaga has inked a deal to adapt and helm Tom Reiss‘ “The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, And The Real Count of Monte Cristo.” The book tells the rather amazing true story of the father of “Count Of Monte Cristo” author Alexandre Dumas, who was born into slavery but managed to become one of the highest ranking military officers in France, even become buddies with Napoleon. Damn. Here’s the Amazon synopsis:
General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
But, hidden behind General Dumas’s swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave—who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.
Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution—until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.
TIME magazine called The Black Count “one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible.” It is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.
Yep, sounds like great material, and musician John Legend is on board to help produce, with Sony already behind the project. Deadline says that this will be Fukunaga’s “next film,” though given he hasn’t even started on ‘Beasts’ yet, and given that the development process can throw many curve balls, we’ll see what happens. And let’s not forget he’s got a handful of other projects cooking including: a war flick at Fox, and the France-set espionage tale “Noble Assassin” at DreamWorks, among others. And considering how in demand he is at the moment, we wouldn’t be shocked if he keeps adding options to his plate.
