James McTeigue Talks ‘The Raven’ & Other Projects

Since 2005’s V for Vendetta, director James McTeigue has emerged as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand directors. Besides recently completing filming on his amazing looking martial arts film Ninja Assassin, McTeigue has long been tied to rumors about the upcoming Superman reboot and was even in consideration for the Conan remake (before eventually losing out to Marcus Nispel). Recently, Peter Sciretta from /Film had the chance to sit down with McTeigue to talk about some of his future projects.

According to /Film’s interview, McTeigue’s next project will be The Raven, a suspense tale based partly on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem of the same name. Described by McTeigue as “The Raven crossed with Se7en,” the film is a fictionalized account of Edgar Allan Poe’s last days alive. Apparently, we’ll get to see Poe hunting a serial killer who is inspired by his stories. As Peter points out, the real death of Edgar Allan Poe is pretty interesting on its own (it even has its own Wikipedia entry), so I’m willing to bet McTeigue’s approach could be pretty cool.

In addition to The Raven, McTeigue has been in talks with producer Joel Silver to adapt Richard K Morgan’s cyber punk sci-fi novel, Altered Carbon. I haven’t read the book myself, so here’s a description from the author’s website.

In the 26th century mankind has spread through the galaxy, taking its religions and racial divisions out into the cold arena of space. While tensions exist and small dirty wars flare up every now and then, the UN Protectorate maintains an iron grasp on the new worlds, aided by its very own elite shock-troops; the Envoy Corps.

Meanwhile, what religion cannot guarantee technology has already delivered; when your consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack and routinely downloaded into a new body even death has become little more than an inconvenience. As long as you can afford a new body…

Ex-UN Envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before; it was a hazard of the job, but his last death was particularly brutal. Needlecast across light years of space, re-sleeved into a body in San Francisco on Old Earth and throw into the centre of a conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that has forgotten how to value life, he soon realises that the shell that blew a hole in his chest on Harlan’s World was only the beginning of his problems…

Sounds interesting, right? Sort of reminds me of an old Kurt Vonnegut short story, “Unready to Wear” from Welcome to the Monkey House. Altered Carbon definitely seems like something McTeigue could handle well (the director got his start working with the Wachowski brothers on The Matrix), so I hope something eventually comes together.

They also quickly touched on some upcoming comic book movies to try and get some hints at McTeigue’s future in that genre. In brief, McTeigue says Plastic Man is not a movie he sees ever being made, the rumors about him taking the director’s seat for X-Men Origins: Magneto away from David Goyer are completely false and as for the recent Superman reboot rumors about him and the Wachowski brothers, he could not confirm or deny his involvement, saying the following:

“You know… I… I would say… I’ll keep you guessing, actually. It’s good not to dispel every rumor, right?”

/Film says they will post their full interview with McTeigue sometime this week, so make sure to keep an eye out for it.

What do you think of McTeigue’s upcoming projects? Do The Raven and Altered Carbon sound like movies you’d like to go see?

Ninja Assassin opens November 25, 2009.

Source: /Film