While promoting her new film The Nightingale (read our review) at Sundance, Jennifer Kent just revealed that she is developing a project with Guillermo del Toro. Bloody-Disgusting had an interview with Kent for The Nightingale so we asked for details on the collaboration. She wouldn’t specify, but Kent did confirm that it is a project in the horror world!
“Look, we’ve got something on the boil,” Kent told us.
“I’m not being secretive but I’m not sure I can talk about it. It’s something scary and I really admire him and his work. I think he’s a true artist so I’m excited to know more. We’re in early stages of that.”
In the meantime, what else is Kent currently working on? She’s developing TV series Tiptree based on science fiction author James Tiptree Jr., the pseudonym for Alice B. Sheldon.
“James Tiptree Jr. was this man who wrote these incredible short stories, science fiction stories and became in that sci-fi world at the level of Philip K. Dick or Ursula Le Guin, very, very successful. They were very violent stories, stories very prescient and very astute on human being and human nature but using aliens, foreign planets, dystopian worlds. No one knew who this man was or what he looked like. Then after 10 years, they discovered he was a 60-year-old-woman who lived in Virginia. Her life then became public.”
The show will be biographical and also portray her stories. “It’s going to be quite a surreal abstract ride through her life,” Kent said. “She was a genius and I’m really excited for people to know who she is.”
Some of the stories that will be included in the series come from the Her Smoke Rose Up Forever collection. “That has got a lot of her best stories in it, like The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” Kent said. “There’s so many stories in there. If you have a look at that, but she was just a one-off human being with an extraordinary life.”
But first, IFC will release The Nightingale this summer.
