Here’s a huge find. Much thanks to Rachel, one of our readers, for sending this month-old Eric Roth interview with Podcaster Greg Fitzsimmons. I immensely appreciate it when our readers become movie sleuths and uncover these gems.
This latest find seemingly confirms my original reporting, that Roth is indeed working on an adaptation of Korean author Bo-Young Kim’s short story “I Am Waiting For You.”
Although Roth never mentions Villeneuve in the interview, it’s quite well aligns with all of the info we’ve had so far about this one. I’m very glad my sourcing was accurate on this one … Here’s Roth describing the project:
I'm working on a love story now that's set in the future and I think I'm putting some of my own things, my own feelings about like eternity and stuff within this character. It's from a short story, and the characters are not that formed in that short story. The setup is in the future, two people want to get married and they want to meet on Earth to do it and there's some space travel and he's coming from Place X and she's coming from another place, and they start getting delayed. He’s delayed and then she's delayed and if you delay in space, all of a sudden eight months is going to pass. She's getting older while she's trying to get to Earth so it's called “I’m Waiting For You,” and it's pretty profound […] it's quite beautiful, it's more like a ghost story because they're never together, even though I found ways to put them together, in an odd way. Anyway, it’s trippy.
Roth (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) had recently spoken about being hired by Villeneuve to write a “secret” screenplay for him to direct. Roth cryptically described the film as being about “space,” “time” and “eternity.”
Described as “a love story set in the future” and taking place in the 2080s, “I’m Waiting For You” revolves around a man journeying through time and space in an increasingly desperate and unlikely attempt to reunite with his fiancée. However, small incidents wreak havoc on space and time, driving their wedding date further away.
So, Villeneuve has no shortage of potential projects as his next film, which one he chooses still seems to be up in the air. Will it be “I’m Waiting For You”? “Cleopatra”? “Rendezvous With Rama”? “Nuclear War”? Or does he skip all of those and go straight to “Dune: Messiah”?
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.