David Cronenberg is busy

From Darkhorizons, 'For the benefit of David Cronenberg fans everywhere, here's the lowdown from the man himself about what he's up to next - as stated in an interview this week The Toronto Star for the DVD release of "A History of Violence:

Maps to the Stars: "That's probably going to be my next movie, and I'm doing it with Robert (Lantos) and Serendipity. It's a script that Bruce Wagner wrote that isn't exactly based on any of his novels, but is in the nature of his novels, which are mostly about Hollywood. He's a brilliant novelist. The only thing that could stop it from being my next movie is if we can't get casting or can't get financing. I mean, it is an independent film and those things can happen. But Robert is a very experienced producer, so I don't expect any of those things to happen. The earliest I could be working is probably September."

Eastern Promises: "This is a Focus Features film that they've approached me with and it's a very good script to begin with. It's being rewritten right now by Steve Knight, who wrote Dirty Pretty Things for Stephen Frears. That was a good movie and Knight is a good writer and the script is being rewritten with a view to, I hope, me doing that movie. But I don't know when. At the moment, Maps has priority." London Fields: "It's still a possibility. There is a script that Martin Amis wrote with Roberta Hanley of his novel, and it's a project I'm interested in. It's sort of on a back burner, I would say. It's about third in line."

Red Cars: "Have you gone to http://www.redcars.it? My script is now a book, a beautiful coffee table book for fans of Formula One or of my work or whatever. It's expensive, but it's really beautiful and the printing is exquisite. I would be happy if some producer said, `Yes, I want to make this movie,' but so far, no one has. So unless that happens, it's not going to be a movie. At least it's a book."

Painkillers: "Painkillers is dead. Who knows about the future, but it's a script I wrote around 2000 and I have just sort of disconnected from it somehow. I feel like it's not something I want to pursue. I know Robert announced it at Cannes, but he was being a good producer by trying to make it become a reality. He was trying to excite me about my own project again. So it was a strange kind of situation, but for some reason, it just feels like it's something that I've done already so I've decided not to do it. He and I agreed to let it die. It still exists as a script, but that's it.

I Kill: "It doesn't exist, and we've been trying to get the IMDb to take the damn thing off. What that was is something (producer) Aurelio De Laurentiis approached me about. It was a novel that was a big best seller in Italy. I read it and I wasn't crazy about it. He had a script written and showed that to me, and I wasn't crazy about that, either. I said I didn't want to do it, and that was the end of it. For some reason, I think the guy who wrote the book was talking to the Italian press and he said that I'm doing it. So suddenly that becomes my next project, but I was never doing it."'