Hollywood has been trying to makea newCleopatramoviefor years.Angelina Joliehas famously been attached for a long while, courtingDavid Fincherto potentially direct a new take on the reign of the Ptolemaic Kingdom ruler.Eric Roth(Forrest Gump) worked for a long while on the script, but nothing ever came to fruition. Now, however, it seems as thoughCleopatramay finally have new blood, asArrivalandBlade Runner 2049directorDenis Villeneuveis in talks to directCleopatrawith a fresh new take.
That new take comes courtesy of screenwriterDavid Scarpa, with whom Collider’s own Steve Weintraub recently spoke at the press day for theRidley ScottthrillerAll the Money in the World. During the course of their conversation, Scarpa tease his political thriller take onCleopatra:
“Everybody I think who had ever tried to doCleopatraprior had done it as this prestige-y picture, which is like three hours long and people speaking in English accents and fans blowing and big sets and all that. Very glossy and important anddull, and my attitude was well let’s take that prestige picture and just blow it up. I really got into what that world was like at the time, which was dirty and grungy. I came in and said, ‘Let’s do this asCosta-Gavras’Z. Let’s do it as a political thriller.’ A lot of Cleopatra’s life revolved around the fall of the Roman republic, which revolved around the assassination of Caesar and the aftermath of that and how the entire world kind of fell apart and came back together again. And she was really central to that.”
But Scarpa hit upon another interesting idea: acknowledging the fact that history was written by men, and thus what we know about Cleopatra’s reign is skewed:
“So the idea is we’re not making the big bloated 3-hour movie, we’re making the tight, dirty, fast 2-hour movie, that was very sort of visceral. And also what was really interesting was there have been so many narratives of Cleopatra that have all been framed through the eyes of men. The entire history of that period is framed through the eyes of men, specifically Roman men. And the idea was we’re gonna approach it through her point of view. We’re going to assume that the narratives that have been created by the Roman writers of the time were slanted, and we’re going to unskew them. So it gave us an opportunity to approach history in a radical way as well.”
That’s a smart and interesting take on this historical figure, though one imagines it may be important to get a female voice in the crafting of this new film somewhere. Indeed, while Scarpa has written this take, it’s very early days and he admits he hasn’t spoken much about it with Villeneuve, who’s been busy withBlade Runner 2049:
“Basically Denis Villeneuve has expressed an interest in directing the movie. I haven’t talked a lot to him—he was off doingBlade Runnerand press forBlade Runner—so I have honestly very little knowledge into what his point of view on the movie is, and I’m sure he’s got one. But I’m interested to see what happens.”
Villeneuve is currently gearing up to makeDune, but when news broke about his potentialCleopatrainvolvement, it was reported that he would developCleopatrawhile makingDuneso he could move from one project into the other. So it’s early days yet, but Scarpa’s take is definitely intriguing and could finally get this long-gestating project out of development hell.
If you missed what Scarpa told us about his adaptation ofDon Winslow’s novelThe Cartel, which Ridley Scott will next direct,click here.
