David Gordon Green started out with strong indie fare like George Washington and Undertow, but has spent the last few years making silly comedies like Your Highness, Pineapple Express and The Sitter. He’s been planning to get more serious with a remake of Suspiria and has now lined up another movie that takes him back to the gritty dramas he started with.
That movie is Joe, which Variety reports has Nicolas Cage attached to star. The film is based on the novel by Larry Brown about an ex-con who starts an unlikely friendship with a 15-year-old by named Gary Jones. Gary is the oldest child of a homeless family with a drunken father, and sees Joe as a positive, if unlikely, role model. The two of them then set out to try and find redemption and a better life elsewhere in Mississippi.
Gordon Green commented, “When Larry Brown wrote the novel Joe, he instantly created an iconic character of contemporary Southern literature. It is with great excitement that I’ve been able to work with Nicolas Cage to design an absolute and unexpected performance piece that is woven from the darkness, beauty, humor and environment of this material.”
Production is currently being set to start this November in Texas (which incidentally suggest that production on Suspiria has once again been pushed back, as that was supposed to be shooting this autumn).