New Cleopatra movie to be ‘lean, mean political thriller’

Back in September, we learned that Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve was in talks to develop and direct the new Cleopatra movie at Sony Pictures. The script for Cleopatra has been worked on by David Scarpa, Eric Roth and Brian Helgeland. Scarpa, who also wrote the script for All the Money in the World, revealed to The Hollywood Reporter what we can expect from the film.

“It’s similar [to All the Money in the World] in that there’s a lot of research involved and there’s a question with all that of how do you want to do it and how do you make something new out of it? With Getty, part of the idea was to take two genres we felt we knew, which was the kidnapping genre and what we’ll call the “great man” genre — the Citizen Kane genre — and smash them together and make something new out of them. With Cleopatra … instead of doing the movie as the prestige picture — the three-hour, lots of pageantry, people with fans and English accents and all that stuff — [we] really treat it as a political thriller. Dirty, bloody, lots of people swearing and having sex and all of that other stuff and just treat it as a two-hour, lean, mean political thriller, full of assassinations, etc. Just going the opposite direction from the way we think that movie is going to go.”

The new Cleopatra movie will be based on the Stacy Schiff biography Cleopatra: A Life, and will be produced by Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal. The Amazon description for Cleopatra: A Life reads as follows:

“Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the second; incest and assassination were family specialties. She had children by Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent Romans of the day. With Antony she would attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled both their ends. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost.”

Are you looking forward to the new Cleopatra movie? Who would you like to see in the title role? What do you think about it being a political thriller? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!