Michael Shannon Set to Make His Directorial Debut With the Film ERIC LARUE
Michael Shannon will be making his directorial debut with the film project Eric Larue, which is based on the Brett Neveu play that debuted in 2002 at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago, where Shannon is a founding member. Neveu will adapt the script and this story deals with some pretty heavy subject matter.
The story follows Janice, “the mother of 17-year-old Eric, who shot and killed three of his classmates. As Janice faces a meeting of the mothers of the other boys, and a long-delayed visit to her son in prison, the story becomes not about the violence but about what we choose to think and do in order to survive trauma.”
Shannon said in a statement, “Eric Larue has so much to say about our country, about the way we try (sometimes quite ineptly) to deal with the trauma of living here, which is so insidious because it does not present itself overtly in concrete terms most of the time. Like most great stories, Eric Larue plays at the macro and a micro level simultaneously. When I read the screenplay, I immediately knew I had to direct it. I saw it. I heard it. I could feel it. And I wanted to make sure that it received just the right touch in all its aspects, because at the end of the day, it is an extraordinarily delicate thing.
He added, “I find it interesting, to align with artists possessing the most vivid imaginations, the most stringent yet empathetic senses of morality, and the most passionate and rigorous disciplines to create worlds and stories that contribute to our experience and understanding of what it is to be a human being in this day and age and, particularly, this country.”
Neveu was inspired to write the play after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. It was also shared that Shannon was directing the play Traitor, which is a new retelling of Neveu’s An Enemy of the People, “when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Those shootings led to Neveu adapting his original play into the feature film Shannon will direct.”
The film is scheduled to shoot in and around Wilmington, NC. Shannon will next be seen in the action film Bullet Train.
Source: Deadline