BLADE RUNNER 2049 Director Denis Villenueve is in Talks To Direct CLEOPATRA Epic

The director of Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villenueve is lining up another directing gig. According to Deadline, he's in talks with Sony Pictures to helm one of their highest profile films... Cleopatra.

The film is said to be an "epic female empowerment story of one of history’s most complex heroines." It will be an adaptation of the biography written by Stacy Schiff. The film project has already gone through a few directors including James Cameron, Ang Lee, Paul Greengrass, Martin Scorsese, and David Fincher. It looks like Villenueve might be their lucky charm.

The filmmaker has helmed some amazing films such as Prisoners, Sicario, and Arrival. Blade Runner 2049 is also getting amazing reviews, many of which are calling the film a masterpiece. It would be great if he ended up taking the gig because I know he would do some great things with it. 

Sony has a script for Cleopatra that David Scarpa (The Last Castle), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), and Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) have all worked on. Then there's Angelina Jolie, who has been wanted for the role of the Egyptian queen ever since the project was put into development. There's no word on whether that will happen, though.

Here's the description of the book that the film will be based on:

Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination were family specialties. She had children by Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. With Antony she would attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled both their ends. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.

Villenueve is also working on a new feature film adaptation of Dune, which is another film to look forward to. Would you like to see the director take on Cleopatra?

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