That Sir Ridley Scott is one busy knightman (is that the right term?). Currently, the man who is doomed to be remembered as Tony Scott’s Older Brother (kidding!), is beavering away on Body Of Lies, a political thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Scott’s old mucker, Russell Crowe.
When he finishes that, he’s expected to go straight into Robin Hood reboot, Nottingham, starring Crowe (again) as a not-so-evil-after-all Sheriff Of Nottingham.
And after that, well, it’s entirely possible that he’ll direct supernatural thriller Stones, which he today added to his roster.
Based on a script by Matt Cirulnick, who was inspired after writing the Greek mythology-themed Elysium for New Regency, Stones revolves around the destruction of ancient religious sites around the world (and, we’re guessing, one man’s quest to find out just what in blue blazes is going on). Turns out that it’s all linked to our very own Stonehenge (Where the demons dwell/Where the banshees live and they do live well) which, it says here, is the tie that binds together artefacts that have primeval powers.
How very exciting. Stonehenge (where a man’s a man/and the children dance to the pipes of Pan) has had a decent movie career thus far – it was knocked down by Clark W. Griswold in National Lampoon’s European Vacation, and was of course the inspiration for what is arguably Spinal Tap’s finest song.
But, as anyone who’s ever driven down to see Wiltshire’s finest monument will know, the ancient stones have an eeriness that has yet to be fully captured on film – hopefully Scott, with his keen eye, can bring that out.
At present, the project is delayed because of the Writers’ Strike, but once that’s over (sometime in 2081, by the look of it), then Scott will sit Cirulnick down in a room and rework the Stones script.
And yes, we're astonished that we got through an entire news story about a film called Stones, concerning craggy, ancient, inexplicable monuments, without making a Keith Richards gag. Must be this 'flu that's going round...