German director Oliver Hirschbiegel has had his share of career ups and downs. His searing look at Adolf Hitler’s final days, Downfall, helped get him noticed by Hollywood (and launched a thousand YouTube video parodies), but his first US pic, Body Snatchers remake The Invasion, suffered trouble during production and flopped. Since then, he’s bounced back quality-wise with Northern Irish drama **Five Minutes of Heaven **and is now attached to what could be his most ambitious project yet, sprawling thriller Eye in the Sky.
Written by Heaven’s Guy Hibbert, Sky spans the globe to follow several characters caught up in the decision to drop a drone missile on a house in East Africa.
While it was originally developed at BBC Films, the script is now the property of FilmNation Entertainment, which bought it and looked to put Hibbert and Hirschbiegel back together. ''As a company we have been searching for a project to do with Oliver for some time,'' FilmNation’s production president Aaron Ryder said in a statement picked up by Variety. “It’s one of the best scripts I’ve read in a long time.”
There’s no word on when it’ll kick off shooting, since Hirschbiegel has been busy developing Mafia drama The Angel Face, but with development cash in place, Sky could jump to the head of the line.