UPDATE: Just a quick note on this project. It’s finally not happening. Stone has moved on to another thing, I’m told. Stone hasn’t helmed a narrative feature since 2016’s “Snowden,” and the wait for a follow-up will very likely continue on.
EARLIER: Last year, Oliver Stone revealed he was working on “one more ambitious narrative film” and had signed with Atlas Artists for representation in all areas to “make that dream a reality.”
A few months later, he admitted he was struggling to secure financing, suggesting he had been “blacklisted” from Hollywood over his 2017 documentary about Vladimir Putin.
Now, it appears European backers have stepped in. According to Stone, interviewed by Italian outlet Lespresso, the film is “White Lies,” a project Stone has been trying to make for nearly a decade, with Benicio del Toro in the lead role.
Furthermore, Production Weekly now has a listing for the film, with a shooting date.
Written and directed by Stone, and according to PW, “White Lies” will film in Thailand and Italy later this fall. Stone is 78, and this type of arduous shoot reinforces what he had previously said, that he has “one more ambitious film” left in him.
Spanning three generations, the story of “White Lies” follows Del Toro as a child of divorce now repeating his parents’ mistakes in his own marriage and with his troubled son. Feeling trapped, he embarks on a lust-filled quest for freedom, only to become more adrift. His path changes when he meets a woman whose life is the opposite of his own, sparking a journey of rediscovery.
Stone and del Toro have worked together once before — on Stone’s 2012 crime thriller “Savages” — so “White Lies” would be their second collaboration, and one that’s been years in the making.
From 1986 through 1997, Stone was a creative force with “Salvador” (’86), “Platoon” (’87), “Wall Street” (’87), “Born on the Fourth of July” (’89), and “JFK” (’91). You could extend that run to include “Natural Born Killers” (’94), which has its fans, “Nixon” (’95), and his underrated 1997 pulp-noir “U-Turn.”