Brad Bird, director of my favourite Pixar film to date (The Incredibles), switched gears last year to make his live-action debut with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, taking just shy of 0m. at the box office for his efforts.
Deadline are now reporting that Bird has signed on to direct 1952, a project Disney has been developing for some time now with Damon Lindelof – the award-winning writer (and co-creator) of Lost, Cowboys & Aliens, and the upcoming Prometheus and Star Trek sequel – writing the script with Jeff Jensen.
Very little is known about the project as yet, with Disney naturally keeping its secrets closely guarded, but the very fact that they hired Lindelof to write the script is very promising in itself, and that’s only compounded with Bird now signing on to direct.
What is known is that it’s a big-scale tent pole project, and that it’s an original sci-fi that Lindelof is building from the ground up (producing it as well), with plans for it to move beyond films to be multi-platform, and Disney are hoping that Bird will set it as his next feature.
The writer-director Bird has also been developing another film, 1906, adapting James Dalessandro’s non-fiction novel based on the events of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. (Assumedly, the projects are unrelated, describe both potentially having a year for a title – though even whether ‘1952’ in fact refers to a year remains unknown.)
This is definitely one to keep an eye out for in the months to come, and we’ll be hoping that details will emerge sooner rather than later. More as we get it.
