Until the **Pirates of the Caribbean **trilogy came along, destroying everything in its path like a particularly pissed-off Kraken, director Gore Verbinski had made a career out of flitting from genre to genre and mid-size film to mid-size film, from The Weather Man to **Mouse Hunt **to The Ring.
And now he’s signed on to potentially direct a drama that stands in stark contrast to his current projects, animated movie Rango and giant-sized videogame adaptation, Bioshock.
The movie in question is written by Michael Gilio and revolves around a retired rancher who loses his life savings after being conned by a phone solicitations company. Currently untitled, it was formerly called **Black Hole **and was one of the scripts that wound up on last year’s Black List, the unofficial list of the hottest unmade scripts doing the rounds in Hollywood.
Verbinski has set up the project at Universal and will produce through his Blind Wink production company, along with Scott Aversano. We’re not sure when he’ll get round to it – but, given the hot nature of the script, we’re sure that Verbinski will want to get it done relatively quickly, perhaps even as a nice, gentle warm-up before Bioshock.