Oliver Hirschbiegel had great success in his native Germany with Das Experiment and Downfall, but when he went Hollywood with The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, it all went rather wrong. He seems a director who works better outside the mainstream, as his 2009 Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt movie, Five Minutes of Heaven, showed.
Now Variety reports that he has ambitious plans for a global ensemble drama. FilmNation has just acquired Guy Hibbert’s screenplay Eye in the Sky (which was originally set up at BBC Films), and is fast-tracking it into production for Hirschbiegel to direct. The film follows a group of seemignly random characters across the globe, whose lives are affected in some way by the decision to take out an East African home with a drone missile. It’ll certainly be interesting to see if they can make it work.
Hirschbiegel commented, “It’s truly a wild ride focusing on twenty people in different countries and how their decisions impact a street corner somewhere in Nairobi. It’s a story I haven’t seen told before on screen.” Production is scheduled to start later this year.