Not to be confused with the project already underway for Alfonso Cuaron and Robert Downey Jr, it seems that Louis Letterier is also surrendering to Gravity and the unknown, with a sci-fi disaster blockbuster.
This is not yet official, coming as it does from Pajiba's mysterious-but-trusted source The Hollywood Cog, but if Letterier does sign on (lost, broken and weary, unable to find his way, he's already passed on Clash of the Titans 2) he'll be manhandling a film with such a high concept he'll need to stand on a chair to direct it. The pitch so far for the alterna-Gravity is "The Day After Tomorrow meets Taken": a father searches for his lost child as the Earth stops spinning...
Madness, but perhaps we're looking at a return for Letterier to his early-days Transporter sensibilities? Maybe he's looking at this less as an overblown Roland Emmerich-style blockbuster and more as a cartoony slice of entertaining craziness. Or even a bit of straight-faced** Inception** surrealism. A protagonist who has to clamber around as everything in the world starts to detach from its moorings is, at least, something we don't think we've seen before. And with Emmerich having drawn a line under every other imaginable disaster, both natural and extra-terrestrial, it's good to see Hollywood at least trying to exercise the grey cells.
We're trying to sound a bit less amused and incredulous than Pajiba here, but it's not really working is it?
This Gravity is rising at Universal, with Mark Gordon (2012, 10,000 Years BC) and George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) producing. More news as we get it.