Arguably the greatest living female filmmaker, Kathryn Bigelow, has been away for a while. Her last movie was 2017’s Detroit, six years ago. She is ready to return. She is gearing up on her new project, which will enter production early next year.
According to World of Reel, production will start after the New Year on Aurora. It is an adaption of a book by Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible screenwriter David Koepp. Koepp has written the script. The project is for Netflix.
The story unfolds in Aurora, Illinois, and follows characters who are coping with the collapse of the social order set against a catastrophic worldwide power crisis. A mother and her teenage son fend for themselves after the massive power outage. She realizes her estranged brother, a Silicon Valley CEO, has a bunker in the desert. Their reunion leads to reckonings on a global and personal scale.
This echoes reality, where Silicon Valley tech billionaires have been buying up so-called “bug-out” properties in remote areas, or vast swathes of Mid-West farmland. This follows the primary mind behind the Facebook core algorithm saying he wishes he could go back and un-invent it. Potentially fertile ground for storytelling.
Bigelow’s career remains long, sparse, and spectacular. She made her directorial film debut with the outlaw biker film The Loveless (1981). Near Dark (1987) remains a cult hit today, followed by Blue Steel (1990), Point Break (1991), Strange Days (1995), and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). For directing the war drama The Hurt Locker (2008), Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. She has since directed the Bin Laden thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and then Detroit (2017).
She directed episodes of the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1998-1999), and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for her work on the Netflix film Cartel Land (2015).
I don’t care what anyone says. Point Break still holds up today and is well on the way to achieving timeless classic status.
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