From BULLHEAD To TIGER: Michael Roskam Directing True Life Survival Story

Before Noah came together Darren Aronofsky was circling an adaptation of John Vaillant's The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. The Amazon blurb:

Outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East a man-eating tiger is on the prowl. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s murdering them, almost as if it has a vendetta. A team of trackers is dispatched to hunt down the tiger before it strikes again. They know the creature is cunning, injured, and starving, making it even more dangerous. As John Vaillant re-creates these extraordinary events, he gives us an unforgettable and masterful work of narrative nonfiction that combines a riveting portrait of a stark and mysterious region of the world and its people, with the natural history of nature’s most deadly predator.

Pretty cool! Guillermo Arriaga had written the script (presumably using a scattered, mixed up chronology), but then Aronofsky's dream project got under way. Now Aronofsky has settled into a producer role, and the directing reins have been handed over to Michael R. Roskam, the Belgian director of Bullhead (and pretty good karaoke singer, if I say so myself).

Bullhead was the second film Drafthouse Films released and their first Oscar nomination - it got a nod for Best Foreign Film (it lost to enemy of America Iran!). It's a great film, and Roskam really showed serious promise. Now he's moving on to the next level. 

And maybe he'll take his Bullhead star Matthias Schoenaerts with him; Deadline says there's "a great male lead role of an animal activist and researcher who must" hunt and kill the dangerous tiger. 

Roskam has another project going ahead - he'll be writing and directing the pilot for Buda Bridge, a slightly futuristic crime story for HBO: "It unfolds when a woman is found dead on Buda Bridge, which leads to a series of violent crimes and strange science that bring mayhem to the dark capital of the European state."