While this isn't exactly new — The Telegraph reported it as far back as February — the project seems to be flying completely under the radar (IMDB doesn't even have it listed). But that two-month-old interview with author Russell Banks in The Calgary Herald is still yielding some nuggets of news as he confirms that "Winter's Bone" director Debra Granik is writing and helming an adapation of his novel "Rule Of The Bone," a film which he'll executive produce.
Jokingly telling the UK paper that the film will be “the third part of my unofficial osteo-trilogy” (following "Down To The Bone" and "Winter's Bone), Granik's film will center on another hard-luck teenage protoganist, 14-year-old Jamaican-American Chapman, who is molested by his stepfather, steals money from his mother to buy to pot and is subsequently kicked out of the house. He then books it to Jamaica to track down his real father.
“We’re hoping we can shoot that this year,” Banks told the paper optimistically in October. “We’re probably going to cast an unknown in the lead and then cast around him. When we get Bone cast, then we’ll work around him and have better-known actors, recognizable faces around him. We’ll be shooting it in Upstate New York and Jamaica.”
Obviously with the year now winding down it appears that casting still needs to be done, but this does seem to be Granik's next effort. It's the perfect example of a filmmaker working in familiar thematic territory but also branching out. This is the first we've heard anything on Granik in a while, last reported to be writing a treatment for a "Pippi Longstocking" movie and helming a documentary about U.S. war veterans inspired by one of the actors in "Winter's Bone."
Either way, we hope "Rule Of The Bone" continues to move forward. Granik truly arrived with "Winter's Bone" and she is an exciting filmmaking voice that we're eager to hear more from, so fingers crossed.
