Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”) keeps piling up the projects.
Screen is reporting that Payne is developing a Danish-language film that will shoot in Denmark and be 100% funded by European money. He did not reveal plot or title details, but this would be Payne’s first non-English film.
It might be his former Netflix film, starring Mads Mikkelsen, that was due to shoot in Denmark, Sweden and the US in 2019 before the project collapsed at the last minute. The story centered around a father/daughter road trip across the U.S. as the father — a Danish journalist — writes a story for a newspaper.
Payne was in the midst of shooting the film in October 2019 and, a day before production was set to begin, the whole thing collapsed. Apparently, the subject of the film, journalist Karl Ove Knausgard, was left with an "out" and had a change of heart about having his story turned into a feature.
In that same Screen interview, Payne gives details on the French-language feature he is looking to write and direct, to shoot in Paris, that would be based on Eric Konigsberg’s 2018 Vanity Fair article “The Chairmen”, which is “about rival antique chair dealers in Paris.”
Another project that Payne is working on is a sequel to 1999’s “Election”, starring Reese Whitherspoon. Payne confirmed that the film was set up as a streaming film with Paramount “a few years ago […] because everybody sees more money in that,” but that he wants the deal changed for a theatrical release.
“The deal was conceived for streaming; I would want to change that,” said Payne. “I’d want theatrical.”
In the meantime, Payne’s actual next film still seems to be his 19th century western, which is supposed to star Paul Giamatti, and will be written by ‘Holdovers’ scribe David Hemingson.