For a guy who has no real problem securing international funding for a talky Don DeLillo adaptation about the perils of cyber-capitalism starring teen idol Robert Pattinson (Cosmopolis, in theatres Friday), Canadian director David Cronenberg sure has trouble funding more ostensibly lucrative projects. First his planned rebooting of The Fly was passed over by Fox, and now Indiewire is reporting that Cronenberg can’t get his proposed sequel to his 2006 Russian mob movie, Eastern Promises, off the ground either.
During a New York press junket for Cosmopolis, Cronenberg stated that Eastern Promises 2 is “dead,” despite stars Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel and original writer Steven Knight all being wrapped in proverbial tiny bathhouse towels and ready to rumble in the nude again. It’s a shame, considering the original’s gripping cliffhanger ending, and the possibility of seeing Mortensen decked out in even more symbolic Russian mob tattoos, until he’s just one large Russian mob tattoo controlling all post-Soviet crime while also working as an undercover secret agent. Indeed, it's too bad that Hollywood places so much emphasis on originality over anything so artistically bankrupt as sequels and remakes and reboots and stuff.