Michael Mann has for some time now been a name that conjures plenty of critical and box office expectation at the box office, but the latest word has it that the filmmaker will be turning his attention to a Vietnam TV miniseries next in the form of Hue 1968. Perhaps most well known for the 1995 crime drama Heat, Mann is an American filmmaker whose 30-plus years in the entertainment industry have won him plenty of acclaim and attention from both critics and general audiences alike.
Even though his last feature film -- namely Blackhat from 2015 -- faced significant financial losses at the box office and received mixed reviews overall, fans of Mann haven't lost interest in the filmmaker. In that light, it should come as no surprise that Mann would be hard at work securing a position on a new project over the course of the past couple of years in the form of Hue 1968.
According to Deadline, Mann and co-producer Michael De Luca have just secured the rights to adapt the non-fiction book Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden into an eight-to-ten hour TV miniseries. Focusing on the real-life Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War that famously saw the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army launch a surprise attack against South Vietnamese and American armed forces, Mann and De Luca hope to turn Bowden's historical account into a winning Hollywood narrative.
Like the book, Mann hopes to take some the personal stories detailed by Bowden and turn them into fodder for a cinematic spectacle fit to please general audiences. Speaking to his personal interest in making Hue 1968 a small screen event, Mann stated:
"[Hue 1968 is] a masterpiece of intensely dramatic non-fiction. Bowden’s achievement is in making 'them' into us. We are them. There are no background people; people abstracted into statistics, body counts. There is the sense that everybody is somebody, as each is in the actuality of their own lives. The brilliance of Bowden’s narrative, the achievement of interviewing hundreds of people on all sides and making their human stories his foundation, is why Hue 1968 rises to the emotional power and universality of For Whom the Bell Tolls and All Quiet on the Western Front."
Hearing Mann invoke past classics of the American war drama like For Whom the Bell Tolls and All Quiet on the Western Front when describing his intentions toward making Hue 1968 is certainly heartening, and speaks volumes to his dedication in approaching the project with the integrity its story deserves. In the meantime, here's to hoping for the very best as things move forward between Mann, De Luca, and company.
Screen Rant will keep you updated with any information related to Hue 1968.
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Source: Deadline