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1. Amazon has come up with an alt history take on the Civil War that puts HBO's concept to shame.
It is also being created and produced by the folks behind Get Outta Compton, Get Out, Girl Trip...
Black America
The concept?
“It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming ‘Big Neighbor,’ both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance.”
HBO's idea doesn't interest me. Assuming it gets off the ground. The blacklash has been pretty intense.
2. The Viceroy House starring Gillian Anderson and it looks like the guy who was in Downton Abbey, is about the last day's of the British Empire in India.
Based on the true story of the final Viceroy of India, Lord Mountabatten, the film will dive into the final months he and his family spent in his country as he was “tasked with overseeing the transition of British India to independence, but was met with conflict as the sides clash in the face of monumental change.” Hugh Bonneville will play Lord Mountbatten, and Gillian Anderson his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten.
Set in 1947 during the Partition of India, Chadha’s film will be told from the perspectives of “both the Mountabatten family and the people of India.” The love story between a manservant, Jeet and the daughter’s assistant, Alia is one of these perspectives. The trailer states that this is “one of a million personal stories” and while it’s not fair to demand perfect representation in one film, it’s clear that Chadha is dedication to embracing the many conflicts, political, personal, religious, and more going on in this time.
Seen a lot of films about the British Empire in India, but this looks a bit different. (Passage to India by David Lean and The Raj Quartet.)
3. Neil Blomkamp's newest science fiction project is "Gone World"
Think True Detective meets Inception.
Following Neill Blomkamp’s somewhat disappointing outing with Chappie, the director seemingly took a step back from working on major releases, at least for a while. That waiting period has come to an end, though, as Blomkamp has announced his next project: The Gone World. It’s a science fiction feature, of course, one that is described as, “Inception meets True Detective in this science-fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope. The Gone World follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind.”
“Inception meets True Detective” is a pretty serious declaration, I have to say. I feel dizzyingly overloaded with existential dread just thinking about it. That story seems it’s right in Blomkamp’s wheelhouse, don’t you think? What’s more, the story centers on the work of one female detective, Shannon Moss. If Blomkamp missed out on his chance to direct an Alien feature, it seems this might be another shot to direct a film that centers on what one hopes is another excellent female character.
The description dives a bit more into the story. It reads:
Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In Western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family—and to locate his teenage daughter, who has disappeared. Though she can’t share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the darkest currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL’s experience with the future has triggered this violence.
“Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence or insight that will crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it’s not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time’s horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.”
(Reminds me a little of the murder mystery/sci-fi story in The Expanse.)
It is also being created and produced by the folks behind Get Outta Compton, Get Out, Girl Trip...
Black America
The concept?
“It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming ‘Big Neighbor,’ both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance.”
HBO's idea doesn't interest me. Assuming it gets off the ground. The blacklash has been pretty intense.
2. The Viceroy House starring Gillian Anderson and it looks like the guy who was in Downton Abbey, is about the last day's of the British Empire in India.
Based on the true story of the final Viceroy of India, Lord Mountabatten, the film will dive into the final months he and his family spent in his country as he was “tasked with overseeing the transition of British India to independence, but was met with conflict as the sides clash in the face of monumental change.” Hugh Bonneville will play Lord Mountbatten, and Gillian Anderson his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten.
Set in 1947 during the Partition of India, Chadha’s film will be told from the perspectives of “both the Mountabatten family and the people of India.” The love story between a manservant, Jeet and the daughter’s assistant, Alia is one of these perspectives. The trailer states that this is “one of a million personal stories” and while it’s not fair to demand perfect representation in one film, it’s clear that Chadha is dedication to embracing the many conflicts, political, personal, religious, and more going on in this time.
Seen a lot of films about the British Empire in India, but this looks a bit different. (Passage to India by David Lean and The Raj Quartet.)
3. Neil Blomkamp's newest science fiction project is "Gone World"
Think True Detective meets Inception.
Following Neill Blomkamp’s somewhat disappointing outing with Chappie, the director seemingly took a step back from working on major releases, at least for a while. That waiting period has come to an end, though, as Blomkamp has announced his next project: The Gone World. It’s a science fiction feature, of course, one that is described as, “Inception meets True Detective in this science-fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope. The Gone World follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind.”
“Inception meets True Detective” is a pretty serious declaration, I have to say. I feel dizzyingly overloaded with existential dread just thinking about it. That story seems it’s right in Blomkamp’s wheelhouse, don’t you think? What’s more, the story centers on the work of one female detective, Shannon Moss. If Blomkamp missed out on his chance to direct an Alien feature, it seems this might be another shot to direct a film that centers on what one hopes is another excellent female character.
The description dives a bit more into the story. It reads:
Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In Western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family—and to locate his teenage daughter, who has disappeared. Though she can’t share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the darkest currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL’s experience with the future has triggered this violence.
“Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence or insight that will crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it’s not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time’s horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.”
(Reminds me a little of the murder mystery/sci-fi story in The Expanse.)