Conclave director Edward Berger, once linked to the Bond and Bourne franchises, is instead making a time travel thriller with Elvis star Austin Butler.
We’ve spent the last few months covering various reports that suggested Edward Berger was destined for a major action franchise once he’s fnished making The Ballad Of A Small Player, a gambling drama starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton, for Netflix.
The filmmaker is about to release Conclave, with his papal drama boasting a heavyweight cast and already picking up the kind of buzz that will likely see it as a a contender in a few weeks when various awards nominations start to get handed out.
Speaking of awards, it was the clutch of Oscars that Berger’s All Quiet On The Western Front won in 2022 that really positioned the filmmaker in a space where he would be repeatedly linked to two of cinema’s biggest action franchises.
First it was EON’s 007 series, with many a story stating that he was a sure-fire bet to be the director of the next James Bond movie. When that didn’t transpire, Berger was instead linked to another entry in the Bourne series.
While one of those projects may yet come to pass, there’s now another project in the frame that could be the next project on Berger’s slate. According to Deadline, the filmmaker is out and about in Hollywood talking up a project starring Austin Butler. He’s inviting bids to back the film – a time travel thriller titled Barrier.
Little is known about the plot, but the outlet says it’s being pitched as Interstellar meets Top Gun, a heady combination that would surely pique the interest of any studio executive, especially with Butler attached. The project is based on a short story by MacMillan Hedges, who has also penned the script. It sounds not too dissimilar to T-Minus, a time travel action thriller described as “Top Gun meets Back To The Future.“ It’s in the works at Amazon MGM with Michael B Jordan involved as co-producer and screenwriters Nick Cuse and Drew Pearce adapting the script from a short story by Philip K Dick.
Butler is an actor in demand at the moment, and since his star-making leading turn in 2022’s Elvis (pictured above), seems to be picking filmmakers with plenty of cachet, including Dennis Villeneuve, Darren Aronofsky and Michael Mann, if the ceaseless rumours about the actor’s starring role in Heat 2 are true (and we’d be very surprised at this point if they weren’t).
It looks like we can now add Edward Berger to the list of fillmakers that Butler is intent on collaborating with. This one is sure to be snapped up pretty quickly.
Given how absorbing Berger’s work has been thus far, we’re hoping that this is the project he opts for next. Rather than seeing him get pulled into a giant franchise machine, an original story with a movie star along for the ride sounds like the kind of project we can really get behind. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
