James Gray Is Now Writing Julia Roberts Thriller ‘Kill Your Darlings,’ Says ‘The Sun Also Rises' Would Cost $180 Million

James Gray has attached himself to several projects these last few years, and given his history, most of them will die in development. That's the cost of being one of the last American directors who makes adult, serious, unfashionable movies without compromise.

With "Paper Tiger" opening this week, Gray spoke with The Playlist and gave extensive updates on where many of his other projects stand. The news is promising for at least one of them.

The good news first. Gray is writing "Kill Your Darlings," his adaptation of Peter Swanson's novel, and Julia Roberts is still attached. "That's something I am actively working on," he said. Amazon MGM and Scott Stuber's United Artists announced the project in February 2025, which is a very good sign that it will happen. Roberts is producing through Red Om Films, and Tribeca Studios is also on board.

The hook is that the novel runs in reverse. It follows a couple whose marriage of more than 25 years rests on a terrible secret, and it moves backward until we reach the crime that brought them together. On paper, that's a genre exercise, but it would be very interesting to see Gray tackle this material, and he admits as much: "It's very different from other things I've done. And yet it's exactly the same." I believe him.

Now the bad news. His adaptation of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" (with Vanessa Kirby attached to star) has a money problem. You can't fake the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Gray says you'd have to shoot during the actual festival, with roughly 400,000 people in the streets, and you'd have to do it as a period piece. His estimate for the budget is "$180 million or something."

He says it "may still happen," but good luck getting any studio in 2026 to spend that much on a Lost Generation literary drama directed by James Gray. I'd love to see it, but I'm not holding my breath. Where are Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca when you need them.

Two other projects are pretty much dead:

• "Ezekiel Moss": Keith Bunin's Depression-era ghost story at Focus, which Philip Seymour Hoffman was once set to direct. Gray calls it a beautiful script but says he could never solve the last third. "I finally declared defeat."

• "Summer Frost": The Blake Crouch sci-fi thriller with Zoe Saldaña that Gray took over from Neil Burger. "It doesn't seem like that's going to happen," he said.

Gray is pretty relaxed about all of it. "It's very difficult to get a film mounted," he said, explaining that he works on his own material alongside other people's. That's how it goes when you make the films he makes.

So, “Kill Your Darlings" is the one to watch. There's no production date yet, but Roberts is still attached and Gray is writing it. It could be the most mainstream thing he's done and also, in his own words, "exactly the same" as his other films.