With just one film notched into his directorial belt, David Lowery has already put himself in the same conversational space with some of the best directors in the biz. And it’s not only because his debut, the Texas outlaw love story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, is getting such critical acclaim; it’s because Lowery is attaching himself to a bevy of projects that almost certainly won’t see completion. The latest project he’s signed up for, Deadline reports, is writing and directing an adaptation of Kevin Powers’ Iraq war novel The Yellow Birds for the newly established production company Story Mining & Supply Co.
Powers’ novel was a National Book Award Finalist in 2012, and it tells the story of 21-year-old machine gunner Private Bartle and 18-year-old Private Murphy, both of whom are fighting in a war that they aren’t prepared for. Like most excellent novels of this sort, The Yellow Birds is psychologically harrowing in its depiction of soldiers getting used to the stress-filled life of battle, but it’s also about two men bound by an oath of protection, and the strain that their situation places on their personalities. It sounds like something Lowery can really sink his teeth into, though I can’t speak for how well he’ll be able to pull off a war flick, even one as personal as this. I picture a stage version of Platoon.
Story Mining & Supply Co. was co-founded by financier and writer/director Jim Kohlberg (The Music Never Stopped) and producer/publisher Jeffrey Sharp, with an eye on developing TV series and features. While Birds is the first feature project they’re moving forward with, they’ve also acquired the Charles McCarry spy series featuring American spy Paul Christopher, as well as J. Robert Janes’ war novel Mayhem and Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Angle of Repose. They’re obviously interested in making heady flicks with an eye on prestige.
Lowery, meanwhile, signed on to reteam with Casey Affleck for the sci-fi adaptation To Be Two. Earlier this year, he also attached himself to adapting Brian Michael Bendis’ graphic novel Torso, and was also tapped to update Pete’s Dragon for some reason. We may start an office pool here at Cinema Blend to see which of these films he actually gets to first.
If you haven’t gotten a chance to check Ain’t Them Bodies Saints yet, there’s still time to catch it in theaters, though I’m thinking it’ll reach more people on Blu-ray/DVD and VOD, thus making it possible for Lowery to attach himself to another dozen projects in the next year or two.. Check out the trailer for it below.
