Now this could be interesting. While Stanley Kubrick is a filmmaking legend, he didn’t actually make all that many movies (just 13 over 46 years). What he did do though, was plan an awful lot of flicks that never actually came to fruition. One of those, of coruse, was AI, which Spielberg eventually made after Kubrick’s death. However Steven wasn’t the only one rifling through the drawers, looking for the things the Clockwork Orange filmmaker touched,
In 1999, Kubrick’s son-in-law discovered an 80-page treatment called Lunatic At Large, which was a collaboration between the director and pulp writer Jim Thompson from way back in 1962. Since then it’s been pumped up by Stephen R Clarke into a full screenplay, which is set in New York in 1956, and tells the story of Johnnie Sheppard, an ex-carnival worker with serious anger-management issues, and Joyce, a nervous, attractive barfly he picks up in a Hopperesque tavern. The biggest mystery in the film is who, among several plausible candidates, is the true escapee from a nearby mental hospital.
Now the film is getting ready to go into production, with Production Weekly tweeting ‘Scarlett Johansson & Sam Rockwell attached to star in Lunatic At Large based on an original story by novelist Jim Thompson & Stanley Kubrick’. While I’m still not convinced Johansson is actually a good actress, she’s certainly got the pulp look and Rockwell is a great choice for this sort of film.
There’s no news on when it might go into production, but the film is certainly a tantalising prospect.