Steven Spielberg Eyeing A Few Options for His Next Directorial Effort

Steven Spielberg is currently circling a few projects as his potential next film. It could be announced before the year is done. I’m hearing his “Bullitt” remake is NOT next. Rather, it might be the movie after the next. A new draft of the script is currently being written.

Firstly, remember that DCU film he was rumored to direct? It was called “Blackhawks” and he was looking into helming it as his next feature after “The Fabelmans”, but the WB shakeup in 2022 has put that one into the “very unlikely” camp. From what I’m told, Spielberg is no longer attached.

One project Spielberg almost directed last year, before the strikes halted his plans, was a film titled "The Thursday Murders Club" which is an adaptation of a murder mystery set at a seniors home — attached to star were Meryl Streep and Viola Davis. However, it looks like it’s not happening either, and Spielberg has now set his sights into only producing that project.

However, if there’s a film that Spielberg is seriously contemplating in doing next it’s an adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which had been originally announced last March as a mini-series, but is now taking the shape of a feature-length film.

“Leopoldstadt” is set among the wealthy Jewish community in Vienna, during the first half of the 20th century and follows the lives of "a prosperous Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in the East". It’s a personal project that also has “Oscar” written all over it.

The second project Spielberg is eyeing as a possibility is his long-delayed “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara”, which has already been scripted by Tony Kushner. Spielberg was set to film ‘Edgardo Mortara’ in early 2017, but production was postponed. Mark Rylance was set to star in the role of Pope Pius IX. Spielberg saw more than 2,000 children to play the role of Edgardo Mortara.

Last year, Marco Bellocchio released his own Mortara film, titled “Kidnapped,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. It doesn’t look as though that has deterred Spielberg from pursuing his own take on the story.

As for Spielberg’s “Napoleon” HBO series, a 7-part epic based on Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay, I’m told that things are revving up on that front and that a big name director is now attached to replace Cary Joji Fukunaga, with Spielberg producing and overseeing the screenplay.