“I’ve been working on, at no one’s request, ‘Kafka’ for 14 years. I have an idea, I have an approach. It was a movie I was never really happy with even at the time,“ Steven Soderbergh said last year about his forever developing recut of his 1991. I think his film starring Jeremy Irons, which spins a surreal tale around the famous author, is a bit of an underrated gem, but clearly the filmmaker wishes he could’ve done things differently. Well, we might finally get to see how he originally envisioned it.
Soderbergh took part in a Reddit AMA this afternoon as part of his promotional push for “Logan Lucky,” and he revealed that by the end of the year, his new cut of “Kafka” will be done.
How or when we will see it is anybody’s guess, but it sounds potentially fascinating, as it will be a dramatic overhauling of the movie.
“I was frustrated with ‘Kafka’ – it had a mixed-to-negative reaction when it came out – and I’m trying to completely rethink it in the hopes of at least turning it into something that’s unified,” Soderbergh said in 2013. “The tone was all over the place – which is the classic young filmmaker’s mistake. I’d like to make it a little more abstract and more of a hardcore art movie. It’s not a tweak: it’s triage.”
We can’t wait to see the result. As for what film he’ll be making next after “Logan Lucky,” Soderbergh didn’t reveal too much (and don’t forget he has his mysterious HBO project “Mosaic” kicking around), but he teased a return to the same territory as “Side Effects.”
Lastly, Soderbergh also took time to shout a couple of recent movies, and if you haven’t put them on your must-see list now’s the time.
“Logan Lucky” opens on August 18th.