Curtis Hanson to turn Kirsten Dunst into a Victorian Trollop in film adaptation of THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE!

Hey folks, Harry here... Zorianna Kit and The Hollywood Reporter are telling us that Curtis Hanson has picked his next project. The one to follow-up turning Eminem into an actor with 8 MILE. Seems that Curtis Hanson likes being absolutely unpredictable. After L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, having him do WONDER BOYS was a bit logical I suppose, but after those two, making a feature film starring Eminem, well I still remember everyone in Talk Back calling him crazy. Well, from the streets of Detroit, Curtis Hanson is going back to Victorian England with an adaptation of Michael Faber's widely acclaimed THE CRIMSON PETALS AND THE WHITE!!!

The novel is often hailed as "The First Great 19th Century Novel of the 21st Century," because unlike Dickens or Virginia Woolf, who were bound to their times in terms of what was 'proper' to put into words, Faber seems to have written THE CRIMSON PETALS AND THE WHITE with a high degree of frankness. According to Amazon.Com's Regina Marler we find that the novel is about, "The story of a well-read London prostitute named Sugar, who spends her free hours composing a violent, pornographic screed against men, Michel Faber's dazzling second novel dares to go where George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and the works of Charles Dickens could not. We learn about the positions and orifices that Sugar and her clients favor, about her lingering skin condition, and about the suspect ingredients of her prophylactic douches. Still, Sugar believes she can make a better life for herself."

Now personally, I don't believe that Curtis Hanson is going to be showing Kirsten Dunst, who is reportedly attached to the project, mixing up and using various prophylactic douches, but from the sound of the reviews on Amazon, it seems the novel is quite erotic and sounds like it will lead to the most adult work that Kirsten Dunst has attempted to date. It is definitely more daring than her Mary Jane role in SPIDER-MAN and the upcoming sequel -- though personally my fave Dunst work has been in THE VIRGIN SUICIDES.

Kirsten's SPIDER-MAN producer Laura Ziskin is aboard and right now the project is looking for the right screenwriter to bring this project forward, although I've heard Brian Helgeland, who worked with Hanson on L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, is tapped to adapt. This one has the earmarks of a potential Oscar-calibre work, let's keep our eye on this one.

Zorianna Kit tells us that Curtis Hanson also has: " two projects at Warner Bros. Pictures: one based on crime author George P. Pelecanos' book series about fictional Washington detective Derek Strange; the other, "Lucky You," a drama set in the high-stakes world of professional poker. "

However, due to additional research, it seems Hanson has many projects in development.

First off, that Derek Strange project at Warner Brothers is based on GEORGE P. Pelecanos' novel RIGHT AS RAIN, which is the novel about Derek investigating the shooting death of a black police officer by a white police officer. I imagine this gets all sorts of tense.

At 20th CENTURY FOX he's got a project in development with Harrison Ford interested in starring based upon John T MacDonald's 21 detective novels based upon the character of Travis McGee. Could Hanson bring Ford back to life on camera... Push him into a classic great Harrison Ford performance that we haven't seen in forever? Well Hanson is definitely capable to do it, but we know that Harrison wants to do this last Indiana Jones film, before migrating to another project. So we'll have to wait and see.

At DREAMWORKS SKG he's got THE BIG YEAR which is a Ben Stiller comedy regarding a trio of bird spotters trying to document and video the largest number of different species duing the 1998 El Nino massive migration of birds to North America. That's based upon Mark Obmascik's novel of the same name.

Personally, Hanson is adapting Charles Willeford's crime novel NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD, the follow-up novel to MIAMI BLUES. Though this one is following the detective near his retirement age, where he's worn out, stuck with a pregnant partner and a heaping load of unsolved cases and to top it all off... He suddenly gets saddled with his two teenage daughters from his ex-wife. It'd be neat to see Fred Ward play the character again, though this is a project that has neither him attached nor a studio. But I kinda liked MIAMI BLUES and felt the story had a great deal of unrealized potential.

Hanson is also working on adaptations of the other three Willeford "Hoke Moseley" crime novels THE WAY WE DIE NOW, THE SHARK INFESTED CUSTARD and SIDESWIPE. It may be possible that he's working to weave elements of all four into a single movie, or developing a series of crime films as an epic film series about a hardboiled Miami detective. Whatever the case, I wish him luck. They're good stuff!

Just in case you were curious what Curtis Hanson was up to... there ya have it!

And if you wanted to know if Kirsten Dunst had any work upcoming, she's attached to not only this, by M. Night Shyamalan's THE WOODS, a film with Clive Owens & Christopher Walken based on Patricia Highsmith's thriller FOUND IN THE STREET, WIMBLEDON with Paul Bettany, a CIA romantic comedy called LOOSE LIPS and a very weird sounding New Line film called AMERICAN PRINCESS which is a bit difficult to explain. OH... and she's been mentioned for a Musical Drama produced by Andrew Lloyd Weber based upon Mary Hayley Bell's novel, which once starred Hayley Mills back in 1961 called WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND. This indie project has had Johnny Depp, Kirsten Dunst, Anna Paquin and Natalie Portman all circling. Wouldn't that cast get you into the theater? it would me!