How can you tell if you’re having a pretty good year as a filmmaker? As a general rule of thumb, if you have to take a break from developing a highly anticipated TV show based on a classic film for a major network so that you can direct a movie you co-wrote and for which there is currently a bidding war underway, then you’re probably at a better-than-average point in your career. Coincidentally, that’s pretty much exactly what’s happening with Rupert Wyatt right now. The 43-year-old British writer-director has been keeping himself pretty busy lately working on a horror series for Fox based on William Friedkin’s 1973 blockbuster The Exorcist. Unfortunately, that project is now butting heads with another, more personal project.
Captive State is a sci-film based on an original screenplay Wyatt has been working on with his wife, Erica Beeney (The Battle Of Shaker Heights). Variety reports that studios and financiers are at this moment fighting with one another in an effort to get their hands on the property, which should go into production next year. No plot details yet, but we’re going to assume that it involves a sexy female robot. Anyway, this will be Wyatt’s fourth film, after The Escapist (2008), Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011), and The Gambler (2014). However, if he’s directing this, it means he can’t also direct the episodes of that show about the demon-possessed girl—for which he’s reportedly helming the pilot—because that’s how physics works.
At any rate, he’s probably getting a lot of sympathy from his industry friends, who are certainly more than happy to listen to him go on about his scheduling woes.