James Gray is already set to direct a new movie, this after his long-delayed “Ad Astra” finally hit theaters last September to positive reviews. This new project, titled “Armageddon Time,” will bring Gray back to New York, after tackling the Amazon jungle in 2017’s “Lost City of Z” and space with “Ad Astra.” Gray’s first 5 movies ( “Little Odessa,” “The Yards,” “Little Odessa,” “We Own the Night,” “Two Lovers,” and “The Immigrant”) were all set in New York City.
A report (via Variety) claims that Gray will write and direct “Armageddon Time,” which will star Cate Blanchett in “an autobiographical drama about growing up in mid-1980s Queens, New York.” More intriguingly it seems as though Donald Trump and his late father Fred will be one of the characters involved in the story. We all know who Donald is, but his father Fred was a Queens-based real estate developer who mentored Donald into the eventual real estate mogul that he would become.
“It’s a personal story for James,” distributor RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira told Variety. “You have the whole world of the Trumps dealing with that school and the students who go to that school.” He added, “James is back in the independent world with this film.”
I have been a major advocate of Gray’s classicist style for quite some time now. The immaculate 2009 romance “Two Lovers” is pretty damn close to a masterpiece and 2017’s "The Lost City of Z," was a beautiful, surreal, and ambitious project which had stunningly surreal passages. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no way to really know when this film will start production.
Zobel broke out with "Compliance" (excellent) and "Z for Zachariah" (fine) before building an excellent prestige TV résumé: "The Leftovers," "Westworld," "Mare of Easttown," and most recently, "The Penguin."