One of the remaining unproduced screenplays by Stanley Kubrick is headed to the big screen, a few years after producers first attempted to do so. Rights holders Steve Lanning and Philip Hobbs first tried to develop Kubrick's war story, The Downslope, back in 2012 as a big-budget TV movie. That didn't come to pass, but now the project is back on and with Marc Forster (World War Z) set to follow in Kubrick's considerable footsteps.
Forster will direct The Downslope, which is now being planned as a feature film trilogy. Originally written in 1956 (meaning it predates Kubrick's Paths of Glory) by Kubrick and developed with Civil War historian Shelby Foote, the Vivil War story focuses on a series of battles in the Shenandoah Valley between Union General George Armstrong Custer and Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby, who was known as the Gray Ghost for his elusiveness and stealth.
Typical for Kubrick, he dove head first into researching the material, taking hundreds of pages of notes, sketches, and maps for a film he never got to complete. Forster will direct the first film before stepping back into a producer role for the following chapters which will center on American settlers and the journey west.
The project has the complete support of Kubrick's family, and Forster seems to recognize the huge responsibility handed to him...
"I am indebted to Stanley Kubrick and his visionary films,” Forster said. “It is an honor and a huge responsibility to take on this project, and we’re thankful to his family for their support. This is a powerful work, an epic story, with its psychological landscape of brother pitted against brother, and friend against friend. We believe it will be an incredibly interesting trilogy, and a great experience sharing our mutual passion of Kubrick’s vision.”
