Cinema in recent years has suffered from a dearth in projects from David Cronenberg, with the legendary auteur’s last offering on the big screen being 2014’s Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars. But while the provocative helmsman’s next film may not be coming for some time, if ever, fans will be pleased to know that he could be bringing us a lengthier release in the form of a TV show.
The director of such twisted body horror masterworks as The Fly and Videodrome, as well as more recent thrillers like Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, has been honored with a lifetime achievement award at the 2018 Venice Film Festival. At the panel for the event, Variety reports that Cronenberg revealed plans for a personal TV project, though he apparently “can’t talk about it yet.”
It’s worth noting that the Canadian filmmaker tends to be pretty choosy with his projects, turning down such high profile opportunities as Return of the Jedi and season 2 of True Detective, so when Cronenberg says yes to something, you can be pretty certain that he believes in it.
On the cinema front, things are looking less promising. This decade has so far seen Cronenberg abandon plans for both an Eastern Promises sequel and a remake of The Fly. What’s more, he’s also gone on record predicting the death of the collective movie-going experience while arguing at the panel that the viewing experiences of television and film are getting harder to distinguish.
“Today TV screens are getting bigger and bigger and therefore the difference between theatre and domestic viewing has become really flimsy,” the director said. “The rule used to be that closeup shots were only done for TV, and not for movies. But today that’s no longer the case.”
If what David Cronenberg says is true, then here’s hoping he approaches the medium of television with as much inspiration as he’s done with cinema.
