Steven Spielberg, Michelle Williams team up for new movie
Veteran Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg will next direct a movie that is loosely based on his childhood growing up in Arizona. According to Variety, the new movie will be Spielberg’s follow-up project to his West Side Story remake, which is expected to release this year.
The filmmaker co-wrote the script with Tony Kushner, who previously worked with him on movies such as Munich and Lincoln. This is for the first time since AI Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg took up screenwriting duties.
Oscar-nominated actor Michelle Williams is in negotiations to star in the movie in a major role.
Spielberg will now look to cast the remaining roles which include children at multiple age levels, one of which will play the part inspired by the young Spielberg.
Though the plot details are scarce at the moment, the film will reportedly focus on the main character as a young child and teen.
The protagonist will be living in Phoenix, Arizona, which is where Spielberg lived in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The film will also examine the character’s relationship with his parents and be split across time periods.
Throughout the years, Spielberg has talked about how growing up in Arizona was an inspiration for so many of his films from story themes to actual characters. A 2017 HBO documentary came the closest to diving into his past but this film will be the first time Spielberg is truly able to give perspective on the early years of one cinemas greatest story tellers.
The film will start shooting later this year with an expectation that it will be released sometime in 2022.
While his new retelling of West Side Story is not set to bow till the end of the year, Spielberg finished the films post-production last year but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the film to push to 2021. The delay did give Spielberg the time to figure out what the next film would be and he began zeroing in on what it would be at the end of 2020, playing with several ideas.
Williams will next star in director Todd Haynes’ MGM movie Fever, and she is also reteaming with Kelly Reichardt on the A24 project Showing Up.
The actor recently finished filming for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a sequel to her 2018 hit Venom, co-starring Tom Hardy.
(Courtesy: PTI)
