As we reported earlier, Steven Soderbergh walked away from a planned remake of the 1960 television program The Man from U.N.C.L.E., thanks to conflicting opinions on budget and casting. But Soderbergh’s hardly the type to stay idle for long – quite often, he has multiple projects spinning like plates on the ends of sticks – and his next directing opportunity already has surfaced.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker will reteam with Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!, Contagion) for a thriller titled The Bitter Pill, as reported in The Hollywood Reporter. As with most of Soderbergh’s projects, details are being kept under wraps for the time being, though THR hints that the story will be set “in the world of psychopharmacology” (whatever that could possibly mean).
Great. So the guys who made us fear rapidly spreading diseases will now scare us off of the pills society takes to stay healthy. Are you trying to kill us, Mr. Soderbergh? Who, then, will be left to pay to see your films?
Soderbergh, over the course of his career, usually alternates a commercial property (like Contagion) with an arty, personal, small project (like Bubble or Full Frontal). Yet with Haywire dropping in January, the smaller films might not happen for some time. Soderbergh’s plate already has the Liberace project for HBO (with Matt Damon and Michael Douglas), as well as the male stripper drama Magic Mike, so we have no real idea when he might get to Bitter Pill. But Soderbergh tends to work at the speed of light, and yet still deliver quality. So we’ll see.
