Luca Guadagnino is reportedly talking to Warner Bros about bringing Stanley Kubrick’s unrealised Aryan Papers to the screen.
Luca Guadagnino seems to love being linked to various projects, as it’s not uncommon for the filmmaker to airily throw out the title of a new film that he is (or sometimes is no longer) attached to. At the tail end of last year, he was attached to a comic book adaptation of Sgt Rock, while just last month he played down the long-standing rumour that he’d be tackling a remake of American Psycho starring Austin Butler.
This is all par for the course for Guadagnino, though, who has previously talked up (or down) connections to other projects such as Lord Of The Flies, Scarface, Separate Rooms and an Audrey Hepburn biopic. As it stands, at least two of those projects (the Hepburn one and the Scarface remake) are no longer on the filmmaker’s slate, which like most directors is something of a revolving door of projects.
When speaking about this to GQ regarding American Psycho, the filmmaker said, ‘any director, in this moment, they are all developing projects. Sometimes you develop with Hollywood, sometimes you have material being handed to you by a studio, by a producer. And I think all of us do make two, three, four, five, six, seven developments…’
Thanks to Curamagazine (via World Of Reel), we now have an idea what another one of those projects on Guadagnino’s slate look like. In the filmmaker’s own words:
“I have two more [passion projects]: one is Aryan Papers”, Guadagnino told the outlet. “It’s an unrealised project of Stanley Kubrick, an adaptation of Louis Begley’s first book, Wartime Lies, that I have worked on for a long time for Warner Bros with the blessing of the Kubrick estate and the Kubrick family.”
Stanley Kubrick almost made Aryan Papers in the 1990s. About the Holocaust, it was to star Johannt Ter Steege and Joseph Mazzello, but the director abandoned plans to make it in part because Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List came out while Kubrick’s film was in pre-production.
Suggested product
Film Stories issue 53 gift bundle: Magazine + Nic Cage scratch poster + Nic Cage coasters!
£30.00
Guadagnino does talk about the film with much greater reverence than some of the other projects he has taken on, and so it’s unlikely that he sees this as one of those ‘two, three, four, five, six, seven developments…’ that he mentioned above. Does that give it a better chance of seeing the light of day? Perhaps, if he’s obtained the final blessing of Kubrick’s estate, if Warner Bros can work out a deal with the celebrated filmmaker and if Guadagnino can make space within his existing commitments.
That’s quite a few ‘ifs’ though, so we’ll have to wait and see. As for the present, Guadagnino has After The Hunt possibly releasing this year, starring Julia Roberts. Sgt Rock is reportedly scheduled to shoot this autumn and beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see what the future brings.
