There are really two different Cannes Film Festivals. There’s the Cannes we know and love, the place where the filmmakers walk the red carpet and some of the biggest films of the year make their world premiere. And then there’s the Cannes marketplace, where producers, distributors, investors and more all get the next wave of movies in front of people who can sign checks and make deals. And today, production company Wild Bunch has revealed the movies they’ll be bringing to wheel and deal, and there’s some surprising stuff.
Easily the one that will get folks talking the most is a sequel (of sorts) to Harmony Korine‘s “Spring Breakers.” Cheap cash in? That’s what we thought, but you don’t hire someone like Irvine Welsh (“Trainspotting,” “Filth“) to write the script if that’s the case. Additionally, Jonas Akerlund (“Spun,” “Small Apartments”) will direct this one — titled “Spring Breakers: The Second Coming” — that will find a new batch of hot young things doing battle against a group of militant Christians trying to convert them. “It’s not a direct sequel although there are allusions to some of the characters in the original,” Wild Bunch honcho Vincent Maraval told Screen Daily. Basically, it seems like more babes and provocative button pushing which sounds about right.
Next up, five years on from “Enter The Void,” Gaspar Noé has his next project brewing, entitled “Love.” And of course, it sounds edgy. Maraval describes it as “a sexual melodrama about a boy and a girl and another girl…a love story, which celebrates sex in a joyous way. Gaspar feels that most films that touch on sex in traditional cinema are dark and dramatic, this will be really joyous… He says it’s a film that will give guys ‘a hard-on and make girls cry’.” Oh, Gaspar….
Speaking of hard-ons, Paul Verhoeven is bringing the French novel “Oh!” by Philippe Djian to the big screen. It tells the story of a businesswoman who seeks revenge on the stalker who raped her. “It’s a very intelligent script but it’s also pure Verhoeven, extremely erotic and perverted,” Maraval trumpeted.
So, is it just sex on the Wild Bunch slate? Not completely. Arnaud Desplechin (“A Christmas Tale,” “Jimmy P.“) is prepping his next effort, “Three Memories of Childhood.” The film will follow a man who looks back on three formative periods in his childhood and adolescence, which sounds right in the filmmaker’s wheelhouse. Meanwhile, on a more pulpy tip, Wild Bunch is still trying to get that “Maniac Cop” remake going, but no word if Nicolas Winding Refn is still attached to produce.
Lastly, an update on Abdellatif Kechiche‘s next film, an adaptation of “La Blessure, la vraie” by François Bégaudeau: it’s titled “The Real Wound” and will track a teenage boy trying to lose his virginity in Tunisia.