Legendary Entertainment is riding high. Dune Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire are two of the biggest movies of the year. So it is no surprise they are making sure their pipeline stays nice and full.
They have optioned Pulitzer Prize-finalist Annie Jacobsen‘s nonfiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario. They have signed up Denis Villeneuve to direct. According to the reports in Deadline, he is expected to start work on this once Dune Messiah rounds out his trilogy.
Dune Messiah is yet to set a production start date, and there was a rumor Villeneuve would himself choose to take on another project before he starts that third installment.
The book is a minute-by-minute examination of what happens when a rogue state launches a nuclear missile, how decisions are made, how communication is done, and how escalation happens. Forbes described it as:
“A stomach-clenching, multi-perspective, ticking-clock, geopolitical thriller.”
The whole thing starts with a blip on a radar screen, and the book then covers, in detail, what happens next. It is based on dozens of exclusive interviews with military and civilian experts who built the weapons, and those who have been privy to the response plans, including those who would have been responsible for those decisions should they need to be made.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was an outbreak of hawkish idiocy that tried to convey that nuclear war would not have been anywhere near as bad as expected, and shouldn’t have been so feared. Artifacts such as The Day After and perennial nightmare fuel Threads were created as a response to this.
With the current administration seemingly idiotically locked on a course it is too stupid to understand, especially with Blinken making moronic statements on Ukraine in Brussels, are we about to see another raft of cautionary tales springing forth?
Villeneuve will work on this with his longtime partner Tanya Lapointe.
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