Francis Ford Coppola, renowned for such classics as The Godfather, Dracula, and Apocalypse Now, is “quietly shooting” his next film, Twixt Now and Sunrise, starring Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, and Bruce Dern.
Deadline reports filming is already underway in Napa (on Coppola’s property) on the thriller with “horror undertones” about a horror novelist (Kilmer). The concept is based on a short story by Coppola, though the titular phrase is likely a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” about the internal struggle of a Puritan man who accompanies the Devil to an unholy ritual.
Kilmer recently played the villain, Dieter Von Cunth, in the “SNL” spin-off and spoof MacGruber, but well, not a lot of people saw that “comeback.” He was also solid in the little-seen Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans alongside Nicolas Cage (Coppola’s nephew). Perhaps this is the career renewal Kilmer has been looking for?
Coppola’s daughter, Sofia Coppola, recently centered her film Somewhere on the abilities of an unlikely lead, Stephen Dorff, to award-winning success, so maybe Kilmer’s casting isn’t so strange after all. Also starring in Sofia’s film? Elle Fanning, Dakota Fanning’s 12-year-old sister and now Kilmer’s co-star.
Dern played Tom in Francis Ford Coppola’s version of The Great Gatsby, released in 1974.
Coppola went on a decade-long hiatus following 1997′s The Rainmaker and the auteur’s two small-scale films since, Youth without Youth and Tetro, were met with mixed reactions, but it’s clear the 71-year-old legend is creating art his own way and with little concern for critical, financial, or awards recognition. That’s an exciting place for a man of his talents to be and I’m certainly curious to see the continued results of that creative freedom.
