After wrangling with Hollywood’s Golden Age for ensemble comedy Hail, Caesar, Joel and Ethan Coen are poised for a return to thriller territory in 2017 with George Clooney’s mystery drama, Suburbicon. It just entered production as of October 11 in Los Angeles, but thanks to The Hollywood Reporter we now have word of an equally intriguing project that has attracted the talented siblings.
It’s called Dark Web, a feature film based on a two-part Wired article by Joshuah Bearman that Joel and Ethan Coen will adapt. Setting up shop at Chernin Entertainment, this is a project that has been kicking around since 2013, when award-winning author Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island, Mystic River) had a crack at the first screenplay. Now, the movie formerly known as Silk Road is officially a go, and it’s landed two screenwriters that are arguably perfectly suited to the material.
Lifted from a true story, Dark Web follows Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old who built and sustained a seedy online marketplace known as The Silk Road. Ulbricht’s empire was hidden so well because it was buried deep in the Internet’s dark web, an elusive, encrypted network that exists between servers and their clients that makes its content practically untraceable to the untrained eye. Along the way, Ulbricht reportedly went on to become a power-mongering, murderous kingpin and though it’s not strictly tit-for-tat, the story does bear some similarities to the Coen brothers’ beloved Fargo.
Nothing to report on the Dark Web casting front yet, as Chernin is likely prioritizing its search for a director. Suburbicon, on the other hand, just began filming in Los Angeles earlier this week ahead of an expected theatrical release in late 2017.
