After Ang Lee won his first Academy Award for Best Director after 2005's Brokeback Mountain, his next film was two years later with the Chinese thriller, Lust, Caution. Not the most obvious choice but then Lee has never been an obvious filmmaker. It's been a couple of years since he took home the award again with his 3D adaptation of Life of Pi, a movie many thought couldn't be done, much less with the skill Lee brought to it. While his next film was supposed to be a 3D project chronicling the fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, something else may be coming first.
The Wrap reports Lee is in talks to direct Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, an adaptation of Ben Fountain's 2012 novel, a satire of the Iraq War. And apparently it has the goods to be an Oscar player with a script by Simon Beaufoy, whose Slumdog Millionaire script won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The story follows 19-year-old Texas soldier Billy Lynn and the rest of Bravo Squad after they survive a firefight in Iraq and are brought home by the Bush Administration to be honored during halftime of a Dallas Cowboys game before shipping back out.
All of this depends on when and if Lee moves forward on the Ali/Frazier film, which is apparently proving to be quite the logistical and economic challenge according to producers. After the grand spectacle of his last film Lee may want to take on a different kind of challenge.
