After ‘The Bride!’ Bombed, Maggie Gyllenhaal Is Set to Direct Warner Bros.’ ‘Creation Lake’

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” bombed at the box office — a $23M worldwide tally against a $100M budget is disastrous. Warner Bros. will likely lose well over $90M on the film, and yet…

Warner Bros. is getting back into the Maggie Gyllenhaal business. According to Matt Belloni, she is set to write and direct an adaptation of Rachel Kushner’s novel “Creation Lake.”

“Creation Lake” is a spy novel about an undercover female operative who infiltrates a group of French environmental activists and becomes drawn into larger questions about power, ideology, and civilization. Given its European setting and potentially large ensemble cast, the film will likely not be cheap to make.

So what is Warner Bros. doing here, exactly? More specifically, what are film chiefs Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca doing? There have been whispers that they are taking bigger risks, handing out sizable budgets to non-franchise filmmakers because they don’t expect to keep their jobs once the Paramount takeover is completed. That’s certainly one theory.

Gyllenhaal recently admitted that the theatrical cut of “The Bride!” was not hers, describing an unusually intense testing process in which audiences and Warner Bros. executives scrutinized the film’s depictions of violence and sex. Viewers at early mall screenings flagged the film, prompting Abdy to ask Gyllenhaal to soften her film.

The result? Damn near unwatchable. I vehemently disliked “The Bride!” which, despite being a unique vision, was a messy, incoherent, and ultimately boring take on familiar genre tropes.

Gyllenhaal has directed only one other feature, her directorial debut, the 2021 drama “The Lost Daughter.” The film was a critical breakthrough, earning three Oscar nominations and winning Gyllenhaal the Best Screenplay award at Venice. She was recently named Jury President for the next edition of the Venice Film Festival in September.