As new Netflix movie chief Dan Lin took up his post, along with comments around big events and big budgets, Kathryn Bigelow exited a project. We all made assumptions. Now it seems we were way off base.
Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) did drop out of directing an adaption of David Koepp’s apocalyptic novel Aurora. That was to tell the story of Aubrey Wheeler, in Aurora, Illinois. She is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son.
Then the lights go out – not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood.
Across the country lives Aubrey’s estranged brother, Thom. A fantastically wealthy, neurotically over-prepared Silicon Valley CEO, he plans to ride out the crisis in a gilded desert bunker he built for maximum comfort and security. But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of several long-overdue reckonings—which not everyone will survive . . .
It turns out her exit was nothing to do with Lin. In fact, it happened several months earlier and Puck News reports that her next project is already greenlit, by Lin, and set up at Netflix.
The as-yet-untitled project is a thriller that deals with the White House’s response to an incoming ballistic missile attack on America, and it plays out in real-time.
This hails from writer Noah Oppenheim (Jackie, The Maze Runner). According to the report, it has not been all plain sailing. Bigelow was reported as being annoyed by notes from Lin on this project asking her to trim the budget and the run-time. As she is still on it and it is still progressing, those issues have clearly been worked through. Dan… one does not simply ask the director of Point Break to trim a budget.
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