With Crash, Paul Haggis went from journeyman TV writer to top Hollywood director in one fell swoop, and since then he’s been the go-to guy to jazz up screenplays, and has also helmed In The Valley Of Elah and the upcoming The Next Few Days. A few days ago we reported he was eying a remake of the Spanish hit Celda 211 (he’s also supposedly doing a film version of The Equalizer), and now he’s been talking to the LA Times about another project, which would seemingly take him back into the ensemble world of Crash.
Called Third Person, the idea is to ‘do a serious story about modern relationships set against scenic locales (New York and Rome are two of them) and to develop each character as much as possible – which is why he is keeping the plotlines to three instead of the roughly half-dozen in Crash.’
He also says that while it might sound a bit like Valentine’s Day, it is sort of like that, but darker. Much, much darker. Well, what would we expect from Haggis, who managed to convince the Academy that making a movie about people being miserable for no real reason was worth a Best Picture Oscar? Hopefully this time though, he’ll manage to create something that’s actually worthwhile, and won’t polarise audiences like Crash did.