Pedro Almodovar is piling up on future projects. He has Los abrazos rotos (Broken Hugs) with Penelope Cruz on the horizon (shooting in May); he also has his adaptation of the French novel Mygale (the film will be called La piel que habito) coming at some point. Now he’s adding to that list.
On Sunday, Almodovar had a column in El Pais (Spanish newspaper) about 88-year old Spanish poet Marcos Ana, who was incarcerated for 23 years (1939-1961) during the reign of Francisco Franco. In the column, Almodovar said after he finished up work on those other upcoming projects, he would adapt part of Ana’s memoirs, Decidme cómo es un árbol (Tell Me What a Tree Is Like).
Almodovar said the memoirs would make excellent material for a number of films, but he wants to focus on Ana’s first night after emerging from prison as, Ana himself says, “a 42-year old boy.” During that night, he goes to a cabaret with an old friend and leaves with a prostitute. The twist? Ana falls for the prostitute, who doesn’t charge him when the night is over. Hot damn.
Variety confirmed this morning that Pedro and his brother Augustin’s company, El Deseo, did pick up the rights to the memoirs. So this isn’t one of those examples of a director saying he wants to do a project and never making the deal.
It’s going to be a long time before we see this project realized, though. Like I mentioned above, he is planning on taking care of his other projects first, which Pedro said in his column would probably take 2 or 3 years. Augustin said Pedro would probably work on the screenplay this year.