It’s been an interesting, arguably difficult few years for the filmmaker Werner Herzog. Generally busy and active, vacillating from documentary to narrative feature and back, the docs have been coming—two released in 2016, “Lo & Behold, Reveries of the Connected World” and “Into the Inferno.” But the director has been much slower on the dramatic front.
Since the beginning of this decade, Herzog’s only directed two feature-length dramatic films, 2015’s “Queen Of The Desert” and 2016’s “Salt And Fire,” and neither was particularly well reviewed. Despite the cast of Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, and James Franco, the mildly-received ‘Desert’ took two years to hit U.S. theaters after its premiere in Berlin in 2015.
“Salt and Fire” starring Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016, still doesn’t have U.S. distribution and doesn’t look like it ever will at this point.
But maybe Herzog’s luck will change on TV. Hyde Park Entertainment revealed today that the filmmaker is now attached to direct an adaptation of “Fordlandia” as a series.
Based on Greg Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, “Fordlandia” tells the extraordinary true story of the richest man in the world in the 1920s, Henry Ford, and his attempt to recreate small-town America deep in the heart of the Amazon.
Clearly, failure and existential despair in the Amazonian jungle is Werner Herzog’s bread and butter (see “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo” and many more including the incredibly-underseen, but totally awesome 2000 TV movie doc “Wings Of Hope” which you should track done if you can). So if you’re going to hire anyone to tell a story about getting fucked in the jungle, Herzog is your man.
“Fordlandia is an incredible true story and we are thrilled to be working with Werner, one of the world’s most iconic filmmakers, and Chris, a truly exceptional writer,” Hyde Park Entertainment Group’s Ashok Amritraj, who acquired the rights to the novel, said in a statement. “The story of a tycoon with absolute power imposing his vision of America on the world is extremely relevant today.”
Here’s where I’m wary. Herzog is an exec producer, but will he be directing the entire thing? Nowhere in the report does it say he’ll direct the entire series and you know how that goes sometimes—name brand director to helm the excellent pilot and first few eps then the quality suffers when they leave (I’m looking at you, USA Network‘s “The Sinner” which could have used a lot more Antonio Campos). Time will tell. Let’s be cautiously optimistic for now and hope this one’s a big winner for Werner.