Penn, Denzel, Bardem Eye Bigelow's Next Project

Kathryn Bigelow is directing the HBO pilot The Miraculous Year but her next theatrical release will be the drug drama Triple Frontier. The title refers to the dangerous region between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, which is rife with organized crime, drug traffic, and even terrorist activity. The Playlist says the newly minted Best Director may have a pretty damn fantastic cast, with three recent Academy Award winners taking a look at the project. Sean Penn, Denzel Washington, and Javier Bardem have reportedly all made noise about wanting to join the film, which like The Hurt Locker is being written by Marc Boal. Not surprisingly, Traffic is the point of reference for the film, and The Playlist says Triple Frontier will employ the "same raw and visceral visual style" of The Hurt Locker "and will likely be a multi-lingual effort, possibly why the script will take time to develop." This probably won't get underway for quite a while, in part because the script is still being constructed and because Bigelow has the HBO project to occupy her time for the next few months. Still, it sounds like Bigelow is trying to establish herself as making a certain kind of film right now, and obviously, as a huge supporter of The Hurt Locker since last June, that's fine by me. Working with Boal again also indicates that Bigelow isn't looking to stray too far from a successful formula, and who can blame her? There are a lot of effective films that deal with this Latin American crime culture pretty well. City of God leaps to mind, and Secuestro Express is a less-heralded film that emerged from Hugo Chavez' Venezuela a few years back. Ordinarilly, American filmmakers don't get this stuff right, but with Boal's journalistic background, the script will likely dig a little deeper.