Bruce Beresford used to be one of the most prolific directors around, making films like Driving Miss Daisy, Breaker Morant, and Tender Mercies year after year. In the 1980s and 1990s he averaged almost a film per year. In the last decade, however, he's slowed down considerably. In fact, since 2000 he's only directed five films, the most recent being this year's Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Elizabeth Olsen. But just because his production has slowed doesn't mean that he's done directing, as evidenced by the new project that he just picked up.
THR has learned that Beresford is now attached to direct Taliesin, a biopic about world famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The script was written by Nicholas Meyer (The Prince of Egypt, Elegy) and the project will be produced by J. Todd Harris and Ed Bachrach, who are currently raising funds. The title of the film comes from the name of Wright's home in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where many of the most important scenes of the film take place. In 1914, Martha "Mamah" Cheney, Wright's wife, her two children, and four others were murdered by a domestic worker named Julian Carlton, who locked them all inside the building and set it on fire. Talking about the project, Beresford said, "It’s a very good script. It doesn’t cover his whole life, just a small section of it, and it doesn’t whitewash him into some sort of saint."
It's a pretty horrific story, but I'm curious if the film will only deal with that section of his life or go a little broader. After all, the man did build some of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the 20th century and it would be a shame to ignore that. Too bad drafting blueprints for a house isn't more dramatic.
