Ridley Scott attaches himself to more projects than any other filmmaker. The director, currently shooting “Alien” prequel/reboot/unconnected sci-fi film/whatever “Prometheus,” has at least a dozen projects percolating at any one time — at present, they include dystopian classic “Brave New World,” a biopic of fashion legend Maurizio Gucci, an adaptation of board game “Monopoly,” vampire film “Passage,” thriller remake “Red Riding“, a biopic of explorer Gertrude Bell, Civil War flick “The Color Of Lightning,” Soviet thriller “Child 44,” Casey Affleck thriller “The Kind One,” another sci-fi, “The Forever War” and god knows how many others.
At present, there’s no word as to what the 73-year-old director’s follow-up to “Prometheus” will be, but only in the last week, there’s been movement on a number of projects: “Red Riding” gained a new writer, in the shape of “Zodiac” scribe Jamie Vanderbilt, while Jack Thorne‘s adaptation of post-apocalyptic young-adult novel “Blood Red Road” is said to have attracted the director’s attention. And now, one older project seems to have gotten a new lease of life, as British production company Headline Pictures have confirmed to ScreenDaily that Scott will direct a political drama named “Reykjavik” for the company.
Scott was originally linked to the project way back in 2008, but there hadn’t been any movement since, so we’d assumed that it had passed into the graveyard of abandoned projects. The script, from writer Kevin Hood (“Becoming Jane“), tells the story of the 1986 summit in the Icelandic capital between President Ronald Reagan and Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev which, while unsuccessful, eventually helped to bring an end to the Cold War.
It’s not exactly a project in Scott’s usual wheelhouse, but it seems like it could be fascinating material, so long as it can avoid the staginess of, say, “Frost/Nixon.” Of course, there’s no word on when it’ll move forward — it won’t be til Scott’s done with “Prometheus” next year at the earliest, and of course, if the director finds something more inviting in the meantime, which is possible, nay likely, it could slip back. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t start thinking about casting possibilities for Reagan and Gorbachev now…
