Back in September it was announced that Blade Runner 2049 helmer Denis Villeneuve is in talks to direct a new version of Cleopatra, and during an interview with THR, screenwriter David Scarpa (All the Money in the World) has been chatting about the project, describing it as a “lean, mean political thriller” filled with sex, swearing and assassinations.
“It’s similar [to All the Money in the World] in that there’s a lot of research involved and there’s a question with all that of how do you want to do it and how do you make something new out of it? With Getty, part of the idea was to take two genres we felt we knew, which was the kidnapping genre and what we’ll call the “great man” genre — the Citizen Kane genre — and smash them together and make something new out of them. With Cleopatra … instead of doing the movie as the prestige picture — the three-hour, lots of pageantry, people with fans and English accents and all that stuff — [we] really treat it as a political thriller. Dirty, bloody, lots of people swearing and having sex and all of that other stuff and just treat it as a two-hour, lean, mean political thriller, full of assassinations, etc. Just going the opposite direction from the way we think that movie is going to go.”
The film is said to be based upon the Stacy Shiff biography Cleopatra: A Life, and has Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal on board as producers. Let us know in the comments below if you’re excited to see this political thriller take on the Egyptian ruler…
Originally published December 24, 2017. Updated December 2, 2022.
