While D.J. Caruso's career started off slow, movies like Two For The Money and Taking Lives never blowing up at the box office, the director has been experiencing a surge in recent years, with both Disturbia and Eagle Eye making bank in theaters, coming up with $80 million and $101 million domestic scores respectively. As a result, Caruso has had a bunch of titles attached to his name in recent years and he was more than happy to talk about them with me this afternoon.
Sitting down with the director one-on-one at the junket for his newest film, I Am Number Four , I took the opportunity to ask about the progress of four potential future projects. These titles include The Defenders, The Art of Making Money, Y: The Last Man and a possible sequel to his latest.
Rumored since June of 2009, The Defenders is the based on an idea from actor Masi Oka about players of an MMORPG game who are all drawn together for a real-life adventure. According to Caruso, he won't be directing the film, but will be producing. Marti Noxon, who used to write for Buffy The Vampire Slayer and was one of the co-writers of I Am Number Four, is currently writing the script.
Next up, The Art of Making Money, a story that surfaced in October 2009, would star Chris Pine in a true story drama about Art Williams, a Chicago counterfeiter. Sadly, it may be a while until we still this one come to fruition due to Pine's huge number of other commitments. "The problem, and Chris is not a problem," Caruso said, "Chris has to do the Jack Ryan before he does Star Trek, so all of a sudden Chris Pine is going to be off the market." The director says that they are also still working on the script, so it will still be a while.
Sadly, the news about Caruso's adaptation of the much beloved Y: The Last Man isn't positive either. The oldest of Caruso's proposed projects, having been on his radar since July 2007, the director is sad to say that the project, for him, "is pretty much dead." Said Caruso, "I got where I did as far as I did with New Line and Warners. It’s just, unfortunately, not going to work out."
Lastly is the potential for a sequel to his newest film. Based on a series of books by James Frey and Jobie Hughes, the second novel of the six book series, The Power of Six, is currently being written, but whether or not there's a film adaptation depends entirely on the audience. When asked if he could see himself returning for a sequel, Caruso said,
"Yeah, definitely. I think if the audience enjoys the movie and they respond the way we hope they respond, have as much fun seeing it as we did making it, then I would definitely come back. For sure."
I Am Number Four will be released on February 18. For more about the film head on over to our Blend Film Database.
