Once he’s done adapting a book I have read, Mike Newell may move on to adapting one of the perennial inhabitants of my “To Read” pile (which just keeps getting bigger by the year, as I keep believing the fiction that if I buy the book I will read it) – Love in the Time of Cholera.
The massively popular book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is about a love triangle in turn of the last century South America, and I am pretty sure it involves some magical realism, since the guy is known for that. Newell’s in talks to helm the film starting this spring. That means that he’s going to finish up Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, do the press for it, and then take a very quick break and get to work on the next film.
It’s interesting – Newell has always been a good director, but never a really great one. Potter is going to raise his profile amongst the nerds, and Cholera certainly strikes me as potential Oscar bait (especially with the guy who wrote The Pianist doing the screenplay). Could this be the next phase in the Newell’s career?