Jeff Nichols not only created one of the best films of 2011 in Take Shelter, but he really hasn't slowed down since it was released. This past May the writer/director was Cannes Film Festival to promote Mud, a new drama starring Matthew McConaughey as a fugitive who meets up with two teenage boys who help him escape the police. The film got great reviews out of the festival, and while that particular film doesn't even have a release date yet, Nichols may have already found his next project.
Jeff Nichols is now in talks to direct The Boy Who Played With Fusion, according to Deadline. The project is based on a Popular Mechanics article that was published earlier this year about a 14-year-old boy named Taylor Wilson who lives in Arkansas and became the youngest person to ever achieve nuclear fusion. The story will follow Wilson and his parents, who don't quite get their son or his behavior, but nurture him at every turn and give him the opportunities that he needed. Wilson was inspired to take an interest in nuclear fusion when his grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and began looking for a way to harness short-living isotops so that they will kill cancer cells and not healthy cells. In a parallel story we'll see a kid with similar gifts who isn't nurtured in the same way and ends up with men in hazmat suits in his backyard.
I have yet to see Mud, but if any of you haven't seen Take Shelter yet I highly recommend hunting it down. Those that have seen it will agree that Michael Shannon was absolutely robbed of a Best Actor nomination.
