Steven Soderbergh seems to be picking up projects as frequently as anyone not named David Fincher, and with all the activity comes inevitable rumors. A few months ago there was buzz about Soderbergh working on a Cleopatra script, with Guided by Voices’ Robert Pollard writing music . In the midst of speculation about a Liberace film with Michael Douglas, and even an adaptation of “A Confederacy of Dunces”, Soderbergh completed his 4 hour “Che” epic, went in to production on “The Informant” and finished “The Girlfriend Experience” script. “Cleopatra” went on the back burner, understandably so.
Now Variety reports the project is very much alive, with Soderbergh shopping his vision of a full blown rock n roll musical. Music has apparently already been written by Guided by Voices, former bassist and SPIN writer Jim Greer penned the script. Soderbergh wants Catherine Zeta Jones in the title role and Hugh Jackman as her lover, Mark Antony. Oh yeah, and the whole thing is going to be in 3D.
At least we can’t accuse Soderbergh of settling in to conformity at this point in his career. He continues to be attached to a slate of diverse (and bizarre) films. This seems like an unusual idea, and will inevitably be compared to Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1963 version with Elizabeth Taylor. But Soderbergh obviously has a different direction for the story, Guided by Voices should bring their aesthetic to the material, and after seeing “Che” we’re willing to go along with it…for now.
Musically it almost sounds stranger than the project itself, right? But don’t forget Pollard wrote some music for “Bubble” — that went under the Bubble Ep title — but that went so under the radar, most people didn’t notice. Soderbergh’s a devout fan though. He wrote a brief foreword to Greer’s 2005 book, “Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll.”