Robert Zemeckis, M. Night Shyamalan, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Radu Jude are initiating new projects.

      Directing the top American film of 2024, which also happens to be an exceptionally rare piece of experimental art showing in multiplexes and, as anticipated, a colossal box-office failure, would normally signal the end of a director’s career. Fortunately for both him and us, Robert Zemeckis’ creativity shows no signs of depletion. Accordingly, Deadline reports that he will direct Jennifer Lopez in the Netflix thriller The Last Mrs. Parrish, an adaptation of Liv Constantine’s novel, with a screenplay by John Gatins (Flight) and Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton).

      Initial comparisons to What Lies Beneath and Allied align with a description of the novel, which revolves around a con artist (Lopez) who targets a wealthy couple, the Parrishes, “by befriending the wife and seducing the husband, with an ultimate goal to become the next Mrs. Parrish, only to learn that the wife’s life is much more complicated than she could have anticipated.” I expect a skillful modulation of tone, visual trickery that merges classic optical effects with cutting-edge technology that hasn't been fully mastered yet, and reviews that may miss the mark.

      On a related note, M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming film has a title and a premise. Initially announced as an unusual collaboration with emotional drama master Nicolas Sparks—where each developed a concept that one would turn into a film and the other into a novel—the film is titled Remain and follows Tate Donovan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a troubled architect from New York who has been discharged from a psychiatric hospital. While in Cape Cod, he meets Wren (Phoebe Dynevor), “a young woman who forces him to reevaluate everything he knows about his logical and orderly life.” With the novel set to release on October 7 and Warner Bros. ready to distribute the film, it’s reasonable to expect filming to commence soon. [People]

      Just when he is needed most, Nicolas Winding Refn makes his return. It’s fitting that his first theatrical project since the establishment of his company would be with Neon, who will distribute Her Private Hell—described so far as “something groovy,” featuring a cast that includes Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Kristine Froseth, and Havana Rose Liu.

      Considering Winding Refn’s significant enthusiasm for cinema (in a positive light), it might be noteworthy that the film shares its title with exactly the type of work his byNWR imprint would restore: Norman J. Warren’s 1968 film about “a young Italian girl [who] arrives in London and is deceived into posing nude for scandalous magazines.” The theme of predatory dynamics between men and women is not new for the acclaimed Danish director, nor is the portrayal of pornographers, as seen in his haunting yet reckless Too Old to Die Young. I would wager that will serve as inspiration for this new film, though if I’ve learned anything from Winding Refn’s body of work (which is not much, but hypothetically), one misstep could lead to my downfall.

      Lastly, Radu Jude’s unceasing streak continues with a reinterpretation of Octave Mirbeau’s frequently adapted The Diary of a Chambermaid. In his take, produced by Saïd Ben Saïd, a young Romanian woman travels to France to “work for a French family and also becomes involved with an amateur theatre company adapting” Mirbeau’s novel. While there’s no announcement on when production will begin, Jude’s rapid pace suggests it won’t be idle for long.