A couple of years ago it was reported that Warner Bros had bought the rights to the children’s book, The Invention Of Hugo Cabret, with John Logan (The Last Samurai, The Aviator) writing the script and Chris Wedge (Ice Age) attached to direct.
Since then there’s been little news on the project, although now The Auteurs Daily Twitter feed has pointed to a couple of reports from Europe (one French, one German), which suggest that rather than Wedge, Martin Scorsese is planning to direct the movie and will start shooting Hugo Cabret in Paris in May, before moving onto London.
Although it’s more than possible Hugo Cabret, about an orphan who lives inside the walls of a Paris train station and becomes part of a strange mystery, will shoot in Europe this year, will Scorsese really direct? It would be like nothing he’s ever made before, as none of his movies have even been close to being family films. Indeed most recent reports have suggested that Scorsese has mainly been trying to put his Sinatra biopic together, with no mention at all of an impending kid’s flick.
The only possibiliy I can see is that as John Logan wrote The Aviator, he did some heavy duty work convincing the Goodfellas director to sign up. Maybe Scorsese has indeed decided he wants to make Hugo Cabret (and he does make a lot more movies that seem to come out of left of field than people give him credit for), but at the moment it seems unlikely. It’s probably best to put this in the rumour drawer until firmer info arrives.