Coming off 2022’s “Armageddon Time,” director James Gray is currently prepping two projects — “Mayday,” a film about John F. Kennedy’s youthful days as a Navy commander during World War II and “Ezekiel Jones” a “Depression-era ghost story.”
We can now add a third one. I’m hearing Gray has replaced filmmaker Neil Burger and is set to direct “Summer Frost,” a project that had been announced back in 2020. Zoe Saldana is attached to star.
Based on Blake Crouch’s short story of the same name, the story follows a VR game designer whose world is forever changed when one of her non-player characters starts acting out of programming. Gray will be adaptation Crouch’s source material. Here’s the official synopsis:
Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley (Saldana) is building makes her own impossible decision—veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?
It should be interesting to see what Gray does with this material. He’s only tackled the sci-fi genre once in his career, 2019’s “Ad Astra,” and it’s well known that he battled studio heads but didn’t get final cut on that one.
Gray is a filmmaker with passionate supporters, and just as many detractors. The 53-year-old director has the kind of style that the mainstream might deem “too boring.” However, critics, especially the French, absolutely love him and that’s why he’s become a Cannes regular.
The Queens-born director, known for his purist classicist filmmaking, has amassed a passionate, albeit cultish, fanbase over the years. When Gray does hit the mark (“Two Lovers,” “Lost City of Z”), a mysterious beauty is achieved, the kind of cinematic bliss that reminds us why we love the movies so much.
Gray makes movies plucked out of time. Watching something like “Two Lovers” or “We Own the Night” is like going back to a time when American moviemaking was filled with character and depth. His detractors will tell you that he’s stuck in the past. I find his best work is often deeply moving despite their melodramatic tones; there’s something incredibly intellectual and formalist about them.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.