Ballardian

This news is a couple of months old, but I wanted to record it here for posterity, having neglected to do so at the time. Andy Harries, one of the producers of The Queen, has optioned Cocaine Nights for the screen, with Peter Webber (Girl with A Pearl Earring; Hannibal Rising) attached as director.

Don’t hold your breath, though. In 2002, Jeremy Thomas (Naked Lunch; Crash) optioned Super-Cannes for John Maybury (Love is the Devil; The Jacket) to direct from a script by Paul Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell to Earth; Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence; Croupier). At the time Thomas said, ‘Until we have a finished script there can be no decisions on casting, budget or start of shoot.’ Can we assume that Mayersberg never delivered that script, since the production has completely disappeared off the map?

Then there’s Vincenzo Natali’s supposedly forthcoming adaptation of High-Rise, also a Jeremy Thomas production. This was originally slated for release in 2006, but according to the IMDB, it’s now 2008. I don’t think filming’s started, if it ever will; there’s been no concrete news on this project for a couple of years. Not a good sign. Another one bites the dust?

Interestingly, Mayersberg also tried his hand at a script for High-Rise in the 70s, which was supposed to have been directed by Nic Roeg (Walkabout; The Man Who Fell to Earth; Don’t Look Now). In a just world, that union would have come off… Bruce Robinson, of Withnail and I fame, also wrote a High-Rise script in 1979, apparently incorporating ’some particularly gruesome torture devices available to ‘ordinary’ people’.