From The Road to Lawless to star-studded crime saga Triple 9, John Hillcoat is a director that specializes in the art of crafting dark, engrossing stories around deeply human characters, even if the latter two movies aren’t talked about in the same breath as his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic masterclass – and rightfully so.
Since orchestrating a melange of crooked criminals and equally crooked cops in Triple 9, there’s been nary a mention of Hillcoat’s next project, but it seems The Tracking Board (via /Film) has today brought an end to that admittedly brief radio silence. Sources close to TTB now claim the writer-director has climbed on board to direct an episode of Black Mirror season 4, Charlie Brooker and Netflix’s jet-black anthology series that examines far-future technology through a very particular, and often crushingly bleak, lens. The episode, rumored to be titled “Crocodile,” will purportedly focus on two female protagonists, and Andrea Riseborough (Bloodline) is already in contention to land one of the episode’s principal leads.
Last year, Black Mirror was able to attract some truly top-tier directing talent (see: Joe Wright and Dan Trachtenberg) for its third season, and even at this early stage, season 4 looks to be no different. Jodie Foster is already attached, and will helm an installment headed up by Rosemarie DeWitt.
Brooker touched base on Foster’s appointment earlier this week while chatting with The Telegraph:
“Netflix got in touch with her. She’s done episodes of Orange Is The New Black before, and they spoke to her and sent her our script, and within a week of that we were Skyping. It was a bit odd, to be Skyping with Jodie Foster – but I did a good job of hiding my delight.”
Little is currently known about Netflix’s release plans for Black Mirror season 4, but last year, the online streamer debuted all six episodes around the end of October, so we fully expect Netflix to adopt a similar strategy with this new (final?) batch of six installments.
