During his film career, Wes Anderson has tackled several of the most difficult cinematic terrains, filming on the seven seas, on a train, in the chaos that is India, and the world of stop-motion animation (and staged a Vietnam drama in “Rushmore,” where the character threatened to set his next play, “in the outback”)
So what’s next? Is Anderson to become one of those directors, ala Boyle, Tarantino or Soderbergh, that makes a to-d0 checklist of genres they’d like to explore than then slowly runs their way through them?
Speaking at the L.A. premiere of “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Wes Anderson has discussed his future plans including his desire to do more adaptations, plus what seems to be a loose, unscripted sci-fi idea set in outer space.
“I’d like to do a movie in space,” Anderson told AccessHollywood without revealing any story points, possibly because none exist yet. “If possible I would like to try to actually shoot some of it on location in space. That’s my preference.”
Update: Ok, Anderson said the space comments were all a joke. Please disperse, nothing to see here.
But Anderson says if and when a project set in outer space happens, it won’t be soon and he teased his next project without giving any details other than it would be an original creation. “The next thing, I have an idea for something that’s just my own…but I would like to do more adaptations. It’s nice to reach a point in the story and say, ‘What happens in the book?’ and you can just look in that and get your answer.”
Most pundits don’t view Anderson as a genre director, but as far back as 1998, circa the “Rushmore” era, he was already expressing his desire to try some of them out, and he and Owen Wilson had a tongue-in-cheek Western in the works called, “Black Irish,” but it appears the script was never completed. Maybe one day they could revise? The filmmaker does stress that he would love to write another screenplay with his his friend Wilson, who hasn’t co-written an Anderson film since 2001’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” but noted the scheduling difficulties. “Owen is not always available. He’s very busy being a full-fledged movie star,” he said.
The Access Hollywood story also has no mention of his planned remake of French film “My Best Friend” that was announced in September 2008, though perhaps that falls under the category of more adaptations.