It has been a couple of years since Michael Mann‘s period gangster pic “Public Enemies” which, depending on who you ask, was either an underrated gem or (in this writer’s opinion) a moody misfire. That’s not to say Mann hasn’t been busy. He’s got the HBO horse racing drama led by Dustin Hoffman coming around the track and he’s got more than a couple options for his next feature including the medieval tale “Agincourt” and another gangster pic in “Big Tuna” which “Up In The Air” writer Sheldon Turner was brought on to write last fall. In addition he’s got the war photog biopic on Robert Capa in the works, and now, Mann has added another pic to his growing plate.
Deadline reports that he is seriously considering directing “Gold” for his next feature film. Developed by Paul Haggis, and penned by Patrick Masset and John Zinman (“Friday Night Lights“) plot details are scarce but it’s said to be a contemporary story set in the world of gold prospectors and speculators, sort of like a modern day “Treasure Of The Sierra Madre.”
Will it move forward? Guess we’ll have to see. Mann will produce the pic under his shingle Forward Pass along with Haggis’s Highway 61 but no studio is yet on board. The days of the majors doing expensive dramas are dwindling, so we imagine he’ll have to shop it to the indie houses to get financing. Will someone give Mann $100 million plus for a movie? Even with a big star attached, these days, we kind of doubt it, so it’ll be interesting to see how this develops and where it lands. If anything, we hope this gives people an excuse to watch ‘Sierra Madre’ because it totally rules and a modern day film with that kind of vibe could be amazing.
Out of all these films the bio of Robert Capa is most intriguing. The guy was at D-Day and romanced Ingrid Bergman, sounds like it\’s got all the elements of an old style epic.
Public Enemies is both an excellent film and one of the more stylistically daring mainstream productions I\’ve seen in a long time. Shooting a classical gangster epic in the same photographic mode as Miami Vice is the kind of experimentation that I wish more hollywood directors would dabble in. Of course, this is also why it bombed; people say they want artistic innovation, but really they want classicism; many critics who said that the video \’looked like crap\’ also praise the video look in Festen for looking so raw and real. What they mean to say is \’if it\’s set in the 30\’s, but it doesn\’t look like the Untouchables, I\’m not buying it.\” Even though the choice for shooting it like this is not simply a surface trick, it is part of what the film is saying: gangster films themselves play a huge part in the film, and the film-ness of them is juxtaposed directly when Depp is watching the Clark Gable picture: the intercut of the film is the filmic print, not a video shot of it (Mann insisted on this in post, apparently). Wonderful picture, beautifully staged action, and Depp and Bale are incredible.
Miami Vice and Public Enemies are misfires? Perhaps financially, but not artistically.
Gold would be a horrible title. Especially compared to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
With two misfires in a row though I won\’t be lining up for this one
Lets hope he doesn\’t do the sound mixing this time 😉
enter megan ellison…