James McTeigue Reveals Next Project, The Raven, Updates Altered Carbon
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Today I had the opportunity to talk withNinja AssassinandV For VendettadirectorJamesMcTeigue. The full interview won’t be ready until later this week. For now, I thought I’d pass along some of the juicy news tidbits about some of his upcoming projects.
As many of you know,McTeiguestarted in Hollywood as a second assistant director on films likeDark City, and made a name for himself as the first assistant director onThe Matrixfilms. He famously took the reigns fromTheWachowskiBrothers, directing big screen adaptation of Alan Moore’s comic bookV For Vendetta(currently ranked #178 onIMDb’stop 250 of all time). His latest film,Ninja Assassin, hits theaters on November 25th. I caught a sneak preview screening during Comic-Con, and while I’m barred from reviewing the movie, I will say that the action is bloody awesome and worth the price of admission alone.
What’s next for McTeigue? The filmmaker, for the first time ever, reveals details about his next project — James is currently casting a period thriller titledThe Raven, a fictionalized account of the final five “mysterious” days ofEdgar Allan Poe’s life. Apparently the famous writer joins the hunt for a serial killer whose murders are inspired by his stories.
More details on The Raven, and an update on Altered Carbon, available after the jump.
“It’s like the poem,The Raven, itself, crossed withSe7en. It should be pretty cool. The script is really good and everyone responds to it really well. I’m in the middle of casting.”
The screenplay is written byHannah Shakespeare(who wrote the 2005 dramaLoverboy, and was a story editor onBionic WomanandGhost Whisperer) andBen Livingston. Machinist/Session 9 directorBrad Andersonhad been previously developing the project. For those who haven’t readThe Raven, or at very least haven’t seentheSimpsonsTreehouseof Horror episodethat parodied the famous poem,click here now.
The real death of Poe was also mysterious. The writer was discovered on the streets of Baltimore in great distress and in need of “immediate assistance.” He was wearing someoneelse’sclothes and repeating the name “Reynolds”. He died shortly after in hospital, never able to explain what had happened.
McTeigue has a lot of exciting options on his plate, and I’m sure he will probably be offered a few more action films onceNinja Assassinis released. But I’m hoping he gets toAltered Carbon.
McTeiguewas working on developing another project just as the actor’s strike began, when the opportunity to direct Ninja Assassin presented itself. The project was another Joel Silver production, an adaptation ofRichard Morgan’s novelAltered Carbon. The hard-boiled sci-fistory is set 500 years in the future when death has been rendered almost obsolete. The London Times called the book (available for around $10 onAmazon) a “seamless marriage of hardcore cyberpunk and hard-boiled detective tale.” Here is the quick plot description from the book’s publisher:
Sounds like a pretty awesome concept for a sci-fifilm, and thankfully it sounds likeMcTeigueis still hopeful about bringing Carbon to the big screen.
“I still hope to make [Altered Carbon] with Joel [Silver]. There is a really good script that I’ve developed for a while, and I’d love to do that when the time is right, and hopefully that time will be shortly. We’ve started actively talking about that again.”
