It’s been just under a month since a new Martin Scorsese picture was announced, and seven whole months since a team-up with Leonardo DiCaprio was reported. So Variety’s news today was well past due really.
The movie is Shutter Island, a 50’s drama revolving around U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island. DiCaprio is in final talks for the lead role, for what is a co-production between Paramount and Columbia Pictures.
This is now the 9th project Scorsese has been linked with in the last 12 months, though it’s claimed location scouting will begin on this movie soon as they were mulling over what feature to do as their fourth collaboration next year, when this script caught their attention and blew them away.
The movie is based on a Dennis Lehane novel, the guy who wrote the source material upon the films Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone were based. That book has been adapted for screen by Laeta Kalogridis (Alexander, Pathfinder).
Sounds rather cool. The book has some awesome reviews online, a fast paced mystery/thriller that has the ‘hook’ of a Dan Brown novel but with way more intelligence and story/character structure.
Scorsese looks to finally made up his mind on his next feature and he could do a lot worse than this one.
One Comment
You’ve got the basic backdrop, but this story, which is of course from a novel and not a book, is not a drama. While I fully understand that moviegoers only care about the screenplay that is used for the movie production, Lehane is far more than “the guy who wrote the source material upon the films Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone were based.” Lehane, unlike more novelists was involved the in the writing process because the work was so good they didn’t want to screw it up. Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone are actually very true to their roots in that aside from cutting, which was needed for time purposes, the plot of the novels were both followed to a T The novels are all critically acclaimed and award-winning. Yes I’m being picky and your job is to review the idea for an upcoming movie without having to care about the novel. Without Lehane’s work, this project doesn’t exist.
All the best, Jerry