The Bikeriders director Jeff Nichols is said to have Brad Pitt on board for his next project: a dystopian tale about a new American Great Depression.
Jeff Nichols has reportedly managed to secure the services of Brad Pitt for his next project, a bleak story about America undergoing another Great Depression. According to World Of Reel, Nichols’ project was struggling to get off the ground and was in fact a rewritten version of a pilot TV episode that he sold to HBO called Land Of Opportunity.
The tale is said to be ‘a dystopian story set in Arkansas, about a new Great Depression where oil has run out and the dollar has collapsed.’ However, HBO chose not to press ahead with the project and instead Nichols has now adapted it into a feature film which will surely get the green light if Pitt comes on board.
According to the outlet, that’s not yet a done deal, but it certainly makes sense: the leading men that Nichols has previously worked with include Matthew McConaughey on Mud, Michael Shannon on Take Shelter and Austin Butler on The Bikeriders – getting critically-lauded performances from each.
Podcast: The Bikeriders (2023), with writer/director Jeff Nichols
Pitt fits the same mould, and given he’s featured in plenty of ‘movie star roles’ of late, such as his turn in the upcoming F1 and playing an actual movie star in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, this project could add a little critical cache to his recent filmography. Pitt also has a space on his schedule now that Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic is no more.
Nichols’ project is not believed to be the reworked take on Alien Nation he’s also written and is trying to get off the ground. That project is the filmmaker’s stab at a big Hollywood sci-fi film – originally starting life as an Alien Nation remake before he reshaped it into something original when that project fell through. The filmmaker has talked about his hopes of making that film and his heartbreak at it falling through on several prior occasions.
We’ll let you know more about Land Of Opportunity when we hear it.
