If there’s one thing James Mangold’s films have in common, it’s that they have nothing in common. From heavy drama (Girl, Interrupted) to gritty Western (3.10 To Yuma) to mindfuck thriller (Identity) to sweet rom-com (Kate & Leopold) and musical biopic (Walk The Line), Mangold is clearly not a man who likes to repeat himself.
So he’s at it again with his next film, which will see him enter the realm of the legal thriller for the first time.
The untitled movie will be based on the true story of two brothers, both lawyers in New Orleans, who took on the might of a multnational oil company to seek justice for the families of workers killed when a typhoon sank their rig in the South China Sea.
Sasha Jenson and Casey La Scala, who discovered the story and brought Mangold on board, wrote the screenplay for the movie, which will be produced by Mangold and his wife, Cathy Konrad, through their Treeline Films company. Bold Films, an LA-based production and finance unit, is stumping up the cash.
It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. Mangold is a decent director, but none of his films are by any means great (with Cop Land perhaps his most enduring effort to date). Still, it’s hard to resist a rousing courtroom drama, and this sounds like it has the right ingredients.