After hearing that director Roland Emmerich would be taking a bit of a break from his usual fare to helm the political drama Stonewall, it’s nice to see that he won’t be staying away from the big budget projects for too long. Deadline is reporting that Emmerich’s production company, Centropolis Entertainment, have purchased the rights to John Coe Robbins’ novel Maya Lord, which the director is hoping to helm.
Maya Lord is the true story of Spanish explorer/iconic folk hero Gonzalo Guerrero, who was shipwrecked in Mexico during the 16th century. While there, he was enslaved by a Mayan tribe and seeing no way to escape, he ended up joining them, becoming a “major warlord” and defending them against various Spanish conquistadors.
While this project may not give the director a chance to blow anything up or bring about the end of the world, it’s certainly going to be another big blockbuster for him and as a fan of most of his work, I’m definitely excited to see him add this project to his slate. It sounds pretty similar to Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, and in my books, that’s a very good thing.
Unfortunately, it may be a while before Emmerich gets around to making Maya Lord, as he still has the aforementioned Stonewall as well as an Independence Day sequel for Fox. The other thing too, is, he may just decide to pass it off onto another director if he gets too busy. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, though. The project sounds really interesting and I’d love to see what a Roland Emmerich-directed Apocalypto would look like. Wouldn’t you?
