One name that’s sure to be on everyone’s lips this winter is Justin Kurzel (pictured) – the helmer is riding a wave of acclaim for his Macbeth adaptation starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, which is expected to be a major awards contender in the 2016 Oscar race. Ahead of that pic’s theatrical bow, though, Kurzel is lining up his next gig – thriller Haven, which will find him reteaming with Macbeth scribe Michael Lesslie.
Details on the movie are being kept largely under wraps for now, but it’s a psychological thriller set in a mental facility. Charting dramatic descents into madness is nothing new for the pair, but it will be interesting to see how this project differs from Macbeth, especially with regard to whether it’s a period piece or set in the modern day.
Kurzel and Lesslie are committed to one another as creative partners – before tackling Haven together, they’ll work with Fassbender on New Regency’s long-in-the-making adaptation of the Ubisoft video game franchise Assassin’s Creed. That project comes first, and though Lesslie will be working on the script for Haven in the near future, it will have to wait for Kurzel to finish rolling cameras on Assassin’s Creed before the thriller cements a cast and start date. Interestingly, this story has been on the pair’s priority list for some time, and they had been planning to make it even before beginning production on Macbeth.
If word-of-mouth on Macbeth is to be believed, Kurzel and Lesslie have delivered a grim, visceral and often magnificent take on the classic Shakespeare play, so it will be thrilling to watch them tackle two very different projects together in the future – Assassin’s Creed is a much bigger, blockbuster quantity for New Regency than Haven is expected to be.
