After saying goodbye to his favourite U.N.C.L.E., Steven Soderbergh is burying his sorrows in a load of pills. Which is a very roundabout way of saying that the director is filling the gap created by deciding not to make The Man From U.N.C.LE. with an original pharmaceutical thriller called The Bitter Pill.
Yes, with U.N.C.L.E. still trying to overcome casting and budget issues, Soderbergh moved on a couple of weeks ago. And though he’s still committed to the idea of retiring (or at least taking a serious break) from making movies, he’s not wasting the slots he allotted for his remaining films.
With Channing Tatum stripper drama Magic Mike now in post-production, Soderbergh has locked in a project to kill time between now and starting work on Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra, and it sees him reuniting with a regular collaborator.
Contagion’s Scott Z Burns originally penned Pill as his own directorial debut, but now Soderbergh will handle it. Solid plot details are still scarce, though the gang at the Playlist have been talking to Burns about the project, and discovered that it was based on research that the writer did for Peter Berg’s defunct TV drama Wonderland. Dealing with mood regulation and “how we as a society can’t tolerate sadness and what that makes us vulnerable to,” it also packs a thriller twist.
No studio is attached yet, though the script has attracted plenty of interest and with Soderbergh adding his name to the mix, we expect someone will nab it soon enough. And casting should follow fairly quickly, particularly if it has to kick off shooting next spring…