David Cronenberg’s films of late have stepped away from the gory horror fare that he made his name on and as you’ll see, there’s little in the way of exploding heads (at least not in the literal sense) in his latest film “A Dangerous Method,” which opens on Wednesday. But fans of the Canadian director’s more genre-led fare were encouraged by the news a couple of years ago that he would write, and possibly direct, a new version of “The Fly,” the 1986 film about a scientist (Jeff Goldblum) who accidently crosses his DNA with the humble insect of the title, that was arguably the director’s biggest ever crossover hit.
Only last month, Cronenberg was reported as saying that he’d completed a script for the project, which was more a sequel than a remake, and that it was under consideration at 20th Century Fox. However, when we caught up with the director yesterday during press rounds for “A Dangerous Method,” the news wasn’t so good, unfortunately.
The helmer says that the studio wasn’t so keen on his new take, telling us, “I wrote a script and at the moment Fox is not wanting to do the project.” We’ve got mixed feelings about this. If the film has to be made, we’d rather it happened under Cronenberg’s watch than some Platinum Dunes-type music video director. But at the same time, we’re sure there are plenty of better things he could be doing with his time than revisiting material he’s already tackled once before.
Among the projects on his plate is another sequel, albeit to a more recent film, his 2007 crime thriller “Eastern Promises,” which starred frequent collaborator Viggo Mortensen as a Russian criminal in London. A follow-up to that film, by original writer Steven Knight, has been in the works for a while, and Cronenberg confirmed to us that it’s looking like a significantly better proposition than “The Fly.”‘Eastern Promises 2‘ might happen,” the director said. “There is a script that we all like, including Viggo, and Focus is interested.”
Look out for more from our interview with the director soon. “A Dangerous Method” hits theaters on November 23rd. –additional reporting by Jeff Otto