While it’s been a couple years now since Jonathan Demme‘s last film, “Rachel Getting Married,” the director has been busy with a handful of projects, though a number of them seem to have stalled out in various stages of development. While he’s directed two episodes of the forthcoming HBO show “Enlightened,” he’s got a completed Bob Marley documentary sitting on the shelf, was set to make a music-drive documentary in Haiti with Arcade Fire before the massive earthquake struck the nation last year, has lined up an HBO show based on Walter Mosely‘s “The Long Fall,” and was attached to helm the drama “Honeymoon With Harry” last fall with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro to star, though movement on that project seems to have cooled. So what’s next?
Well for now, Demme will head back to television. Deadline reports that Demme will direct the pilot and executive produce a forthcoming CBS supernatural medical drama (groan). The current untitled project “centers on an ultra-competitive surgeon whose life is changed forever when his ex-wife dies and begins teaching him what life is all about from the here-after.” So all it takes for someone to learn about life is for their spouse to die. Interesting. Anyway, it sounds dreadful and we hope this is just a minor detour on Demme’s path back to feature filmmaking.
Meanwhile, The Wrap reports that Jonah Hill has sold an untitled single-camera comedy spec script that he might direct to Fox. The cable network has been enjoying being in the Jonah Hill business, snapping up a seven-episode commitment to the actor’s new animated series, “Allen Gregory,” last year. In addition, Fox will now have a first look deal to future television projects from Hill’s newly launched production company JHF. Not too shabby.
As for Hill, he’s set to film “21 Jump Street” this spring and will next be seen in David Gordon Green‘s “The Sitter” hitting theaters this summer.
