Off the back of the success of Limitless, director Neil Burger seems to be lining a batch of new projects. He’s already in negotiations to take on video game adaptation Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for Sony and now he’s attached to a new version of the story of legendary outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.
Up in the Air scriptwriter Sheldon Turner will pen the screenplay, working from Jeff Guinn’s book We Both Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.
While you could argue that the 1967 Arthur Penn film, which saw Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker, remains the seminal treatment of the thieving, tragic, twosome, it was a more romanticised version of their real-life story (yes, even with them dying in a hail of hot lead.)
Burger and Turner appear to be developing a much darker take on the tale, and have secured funding from Marissa McMahon to at least start getting a screenplay on paper.
Guinn’s book tracks the facts, including that Clyde’s first kill was a sexually abusive prison cellmate, that he broke a man who took the rap for that slaughter out of prison and that Bonnie was most likely a prostitute before signing on with her bullet-flinging beau. Oh, and that they were 22 when they died after killing seven people.