This is only a small piece of news but by all means a very interesting small piece. The team who brought you some truly original work: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, are going to be collaborating again after doing a couple of projects separately.
The project is only at the pitching stage and there is no script yet but any details are being kept very close to their chests. According to the LA Times the film will not be Kaufman’s musical Frank or Francis, a Hollywood satire which is would be told very much in the same style as Adaptation.
This secret project would mark the first time Jonze and Kaufman will have worked together since 2002 on Adaptation after both going off to do other projects and films alone. Jonze plied his craft to the critically acclaimed screen version of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, while Kaufman wrote his Oscar winning script to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and his own directorial debut Synecdoche, New York.
For Kaufman this announcement of a new project with his former collaborator seems a little odd, considering he was quoted as saying:
I don‘t know how I could go back to giving [one of my scripts] to another director unless I have to. Although I‘ve worked with three directors and enjoyed working with two of them a lot, I feel like this is my stuff and I‘ve got a taste for doing it and controlling it and not having to answer to people.
Regardless of his reasons, I am very excited to see the team behind Being John Malkovich (which is one of my very favourite films) reuniting. We’ll keep you posted when more details come through.
