Posted in: Movies | Tagged: cleopatra, denis villeneuve, HRL

Cleopatra Reboot to be Gritty, Cuss-Filled, Sexy Political Thriller, Says Screenwriter

Published Sun, 24 Dec 2017 11:29:23 -0600

During an interview about All the Money in the World, screenwriter David Scarpa dropped some details about Cleopatra, which will reportedly be directed by Denis Villeneuve. According to Scarpa, the movie will eschew the pageantry of past biopics like the 1963 classic starring Elizabeth Taylor for a more modern, gritty take.

"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?" Scarpa told THR. "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."

What exactly does that mean?

"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.," Scarpa elaborated on the movie, which will reportedly be based on the book Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. "Just going the opposite direction from the way we think that movie is going to go."

Well, that has potential. Let's just hope they do a better job of casting than Gods of Egypt.