Darren Aronofsky burst onto the scene over two decades ago with psychological thrillers Pi and Requiem for a Dream, seemingly setting out a stall as Hollywood’s foremost purveyor of complex existential drama. However, since then his career has been incredibly unpredictable as he’s moved from genre to genre without hesitation, and even flirted with a couple of major big budget properties.
The Fountain was an ambitious misfire and The Wrestler was an old fashioned character piece set in the niche world of professional wrestling, although he returned to familiar thematic territory with Black Swan, landing an Academy Award nomination for Best Director in the process. Incredibly, Paramount handed him $150 million to make biblical epic Noah which turned out to be his biggest hit by far, although we’re almost four years removed from the release of mother!, and people are still trying to figure out what the hell that was supposed to be.
In the midst of all that he came close to rebooting Batman and tackling The Wolverine, but after refocusing on original concepts, he’s now got two new movies in the works. First up is insane-sounding The Whale, which will star Brendan Fraser as a 600-pound recluse intent on eating himself to death who gets an unlikely shot at redemption, while he’s also signed on to reteam with Requiem for a Dream‘s Jared Leto in Blumhouse thriller Adrift.
Based on a short story, the plot follows a fishing boat that picks up a distress signal leading to an abandoned yacht, only to discover that something supernatural may be afoot. That certainly sounds like the B-tier genre formula that’s right up Blumhouse’s street, but interest in Adrift will have shot up exponentially now that two talents like Darren Aronofsky and Jared Leto have boarded the project.
