Hollywood has a long tradition of turning actors into directors and vice versa. Go as far back as the golden-age directorRaoul Walsh, the brilliant artist behindWhite Heat,High Sierra,Gentleman Jim, andThe Roaring Twenties, who started directing shorts around the same time he started acting, cresting in his uncredited role as John Wilkes Booth inD.W. Griffith’s repugnant yet amazingThe Birth of a Nation.Charles Laughtononly directed one film in his career but that movie wasThe Night of the Hunter, one of the best American films to ever be released;Orson Wellesdirected at least five of the best films ever made, and funded many of them by appearing in other people’s movies. Then there’sJohn Cassavettes,Warren Beatty,Ida Lupino,Dennis Hopper,Clint Eastwood,Terry Gilliam,George Clooney,Bill Duke,Angelina Jolie,Sarah Polley,Robert Redford, and the list goes on and on.
AddIdris Elba’s name to that list as of this afternoon, as the imminently watchableBeasts of No Nationstar is set to direct his first film later this year. In an interview with StudioCanal CEODanny Perkins,Screen Daily confirmsthat Elba will take on Victor Headley’s novelYardiefor his directorial debut, working from a script byBrock Norman Brock, who co-wroteNicolas Winding Refn’s manicBronson. Here’s how the book is synopsized:
D, a courier carrying cocaine from Jamaica to London, decides to go it alone and disappears into the mean streets of Hackney carrying a kilo of white powder that his erstwhile friends are anxious to recover. But D’s treachery will never be forgotten – or forgiven.
It’s a story that could end up being hugely engrossing, but I’m most fascinated to see how Elba will work in his own personal ideas and politics into the filmmaking itself. It’s all well and good to make a drug-trafficking thriller-drama, but one would hope that something more gut-level and intimate stirred Elba to take this material on. No casting or crew announcements have been made as of yet, but here’s hoping thatYardieends up being closer to something like Duke’sDeep CoverorSteven Soderbergh’s magnificentTrafficthan something as trifling asLayer CakeorBlow.
