So what’s next for the revered auteur? Looks like the adaptation of Brian Selznick’s THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, a project that Scorsese and his DEPARTED producer Graham King optioned back in early 2007. The project eventually moved away from Scorsese and went to ICE AGE director Chris Wedge in 2008 before, yet again, going back to Scorsese as early as the beginning of this month (thanks to the solid reporting of European publications Zeit Online and Comme Au Cinéma).
A breakdown of the story from Mike’s 2007 write-up: “The book follows a 12-year-old boy living in a train station at the turn of the 20th century. His father, a museum curator, dies but not before showing him his latest discovery – a robot sitting at a desk waiting to deliver an important message, if only they could turn him on. The young boy becomes obsessed with solving the mystery in his father’s memory to find out the robot’s secret.”
In all that movement of the project, what’s changed? Not much apart from what seems like the determination to actually get this sucker moving (no doubt bolstered by the critical successes of Spike Jonze’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and Wes Anderson’s FANTASTIC MR. FOX). They’re still using John Logan’s adaptation (Logan, who has been on board from the start) and they’re currently on the fast track for a June 1st start date in London.
Scorsese has, literally, a gajillion projects on his back burner, so I’m not even gonna try to list them. But it looks like HUGO CABRET will be his next. And honestly, from what I know of the book, it touches on elements that seem central to Scorsese’s love of European cinema which has me stoked to see what sort of vision he’ll bring to a genre he’s yet to tackle.