Matt Reeves Could Make Passion Project The Invisible Woman Before Third Apes Movie
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Fox’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes proved that Matt Reeves is the quality blockbuster filmmaker his earlier films hinted at, so it’s obvious that his next project is a hot topic among moviegoers. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was still seven months away from its release when Fox had Reeves sign the dotted line to write and direct the next Apes sequel, but will that actually be his next feature, or will it be something else entirely?
For the past six years, Reeves has wanted to make an original sci-fi flick called The Invisible Woman, which has nothing to do with actual invisibility or either the 1940 or 2013 films of the same name. Speaking with Coming Soon, Reeves revealed it’s within the realm of possibility that he could make The Invisible Woman as his next movie, though it isn’t the most likely scenario.
“That’s still a movie I desperately want to make,” Reeves said. “If I don’t make it right before this one, I’ll make it right after the next ape film.” He then later told Coming Soon that he doubts that he’ll make it before the third Apes movie, because the sequel will “be such an enormous undertaking to get going.”
Even if it were a fairly simple pre-production process, Apes would probably still win out, since box office success is top priority in Hollywood. Invisible Woman‘s small scale could mean a narrower theatrical roll-out, so there’s really only the smallest chance that it would come first. Unless Andy Serkis decides to take a two-year retirement from acting or something. (Oh please, please don’t do that, Andy!)
So what’s this movie even about? First conceived back when Reeves was working on getting his breakout feature Cloverfield to audiences, The Invisible Woman is an intimate character study, which the director called Hitchcockian and akin to the limited scope of Let Me In. Back when the idea was first announced as a GreeneStreet Films production, it was described as a thriller that “probes the mind of a former beauty queen who turns to a life of crime to protect her family.” Reeves later called it “an anatomy of one woman’s desperation.” Will somebody tell me where the science fiction for this project comes in? Because it all sounds very straightforward to me.
Either way it goes, I’m interested. While I wasn’t that big of a fan of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes script from Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Mark Bomback, I was consistently pleased by Reeves’ direction, and I’m hoping he and Bomback can spin a better story out of the third movie. And if Reeves wants to pull a Joss Whedon and create The Invisible Woman in a short amount of time before, after, or during the next Apes production, we at GFR are behind that decision.
