Director Oliver Hirschbiegel first came to our attention with the exceptional “Downfall”, a film about Hitler’s last days.
Sadly, he then followed that up with “Invasion”, a fairly lifeless reworking of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, although that seems to have had more to do with problems with the studio than with Hirschbiegel himself.
Variety have news this morning of a new project for Hirschbiegel, namely an adaptation of The Dark Side of the Moon, a novel by Swiss author Martin Stutor.
David Marconi (Enemy of the State, Die Hard 4.0) will draft the script, all about a lawyer who starts to dabble in magic mushrooms, discovering in the process of the ensuing trip that the life he had built for himself was no longer satisfying. As a result, he begins to withdraw from society. Apparently, the novel has already been translated into eight different languages and shooting is due to start in Switzerland, France and Germany in Spring 2011.
Hirschbiegel has a fair amount on his plate right now. “Five Minutes of Heaven”, with Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, is the story of a meeting between a UVF killer and the brother of one of his victims and did the festival circuit last year. He is also currently working on The Angel Face, a German biopic about Giorgio Basile, a German mafia hitman who became a state witness against the Italian mafia in the late 1990’s.
There’s no word on casting yet and as always, watch this space for more news as we get it.
