It was just a few weeks ago that Jane Campion, 70, told a Locarno audience that the success of 2021’s “Power of the Dog” led her to getting a sort of carte blanche for her next project, and seemingly confirmed that she was currently working on her next film.
Campion did not go further into detail about the film, but did elaborate about having the financing ready for it …
“I think I’m in a good place, to be honest. I think I’m very lucky because I know there will be money for me. People in the industry believe, maybe wrongly, that there will be another really good film. I certainly will be trying.”
Now, an online source is claiming that pre-production is underway on the film and that it’s a remake/adaptation of “East of Eden.” Is this the same project that Zoe Kazan wrote for Netflix? I’m not too sure about that and have started asking around for some clarification — that project is set to star Christopher Abbott and Florence Pugh.
Sources had told Deadline that Abbott was in talks to play James Dean’s role, Adam Trask, and Pugh would play antiheroine Cathy Ames, portrayed by Jo Van Fleet in the 1955 film. Kazan has supposedly put a feminist twist to John Steinbeck’s novel by deciding to center her story around Pugh’s Cathy instead of Adam.
Campion hadn’t released a film in over 12 years before 2021’s critically acclaimed, and Oscar-winning, “The Power of the Dog.” She thought she had finished making films when she completed the film and would focus on a personal project of hers: a pop-up school for aspiring filmmakers in her native New Zealand.
“It was such a thrill to have a late-career success and to feel that at the end of it that I could do anything I wanted – and the idea of giving back was really fun,” she told a Thursday night Locarno Film Festival audience.
Campion is pure class. she’s also the director of “The Piano,” one of the truly singular films of the 1990s, which led to Campion becoming the first female director to ever win the Palme. The Kiwi-born filmmaker has been helming films since the ‘80s, her most acclaimed include “An Angel at My Table,” “Sweetie” and “The Portrait of a Lady.”