In the early aughts, right after the success of Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine,” there was a boom of documentary filmmakers who tried to rip off Moore’s intrusive, put-yourself-into-the-story brand of filmmaking .
Moore’s style is still being emulated to this day, but barely anyone’s been able to duplicate his wryly humorous non-fiction, ranging from his landmark “Roger & Me,” to “Bowling From Columbine” to “Fahrenheit 9/11” to “Sicko.”
We haven’t gotten a new film from Moore, 70, since his 2018 anti-Trump doc “Fahrenheit 11/9” failed to find an audience. The filmmaker is now telling Deadline that he’s “working quietly” on a new film. He refuses to divulge the topic in fear that if word got out the project would be “shut down.”
“I’ve been working on something, yes, for the last number of months, but I can’t talk about that right now,” he says.
“When you’re me, you have to make sure you’re alive to make the film. I’m not unconscious of what the risks are, but that’s never stopped me and this is my 35th year of making movies. I am working quietly on it with my producers. We don’t want to get shut down so I’m not going to say much more. But as of now, we’re moving forward.”
As with his previous films, expect this latest Moore doc to be political, he doesn’t really tackle anything else but current day topics, but if he’s learned his lesson from “Fahrenheit 11/9” then he won’t explicitly make it about Trump’s re-election. Then again, I don’t think he has the capacity to restrain himself.