For years Paul Verhoeven made his name with balls to the walls sci-fi flicks and thrillers, like RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers. However after 2000, he went pretty quiet, only re-emerging in 2006 with the very different Dutch war thriller Black Book, which was more a return to the tight, character driven pieces of his early Dutch career. Since then we’ve heard little more, but now it appears he’s planning a new film, but those hoping for a return to Total Recall will be disappointed.
Zomergasten is reporting, via /Film, that he’s now hard at work on an adaptation of Louis Couperus’ novel, The Hidden Force. The book, written in 1900, is set in the Duth East Indies during the Netherlands’ time as a great colonial power, and concerns an official who tries to impart western ideas to the locals. Unable to see where the natives are coming from, the official engineers his own downfall by trying to force his ideas onto them, which they reject in favour of their on traditions.
Or, as Vehoeven himself puts it, [The movie is about] rebellion against colonial rule, the emergence of fundamentalist Islam, the behavior between people, adultery and psychic powers. It is a story about things that we do not understand but it does happen.
Verhoeven has apparently wanted to make the movie since the 1970s, but was always stymied by the high budget needed. Now he’s hoping to finally get it off the ground, although it doesn’t appear all the pieces are in place yet. And no, it won’t be in English, as he’s sticking with the original Dutch.