Writer-Director Team Behind ‘The Road’ Fill Up Their Slates

After debuting their last effort “The Road” at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, writer-director team Joe Penhall and John Hillcoat are going gung-ho trying to fill their upcoming slates.

First up, the two are in talks with Daniel Craig for an English remake of French heist film “La Bonne Annee.” The original 1973 film by Claude Lelouch centers on a criminal who plans to rob Cannes jewelers soon after being released from prison. Craig would presumably star as said criminal.

The duo are then hoping to reteam at a later date to adapt Penhall’s own play, “Landscape With Weapons.” The story follows a military technician who, after inventing a revolutionary new weapon, finds himself battling against the military-industrial complex desperate to get hold of the intellectual ownership of the new technology.

On top of their partnership, the two also have their own projects in the works. Penhall is looking at working with Mike Nichols on his Fox 2000 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s “Deep Water,” which centers on a man who allows his wife to sleep with other men as long as she doesn’t leave their family. Hillcoat, meanwhile, is also talking to Craig about an adaptation of Nick Cave’s novel “The Death Of Bunny Munro,” the story of a sex-obsessed traveling salesman on his final road trip. Cave (and Warren Ellis) scored Hillcoat’s “The Road” as well as scoring and penning his 2005 film, “The Proposition.”

Oddly, the projects they’re lining up seem to steer away from both Penhall and Hillcoat’s previous works. Hillcoat’s ‘Road’ and ‘Proposition’ are very character-based atmospheric works while Penhall has predominantly been a playwright who has only dabbled in British cinema.

PS, six new scenes from ‘The Road” have popped-up online, but we’d encourage you to actually not watch them as it’s really a film you want to go into mostly blind and just experience it for what is is.