Ridley Scott, at 87, has 9 films in development: The Dog Stars is my best film
According to CinemaDrame News Agency, Ridley Scott has repeated his bold claim—this time not about Gladiator II but regarding his upcoming film The Dog Stars. In a new interview with Dazed, the 87-year-old filmmaker discussed his latest project, the story for Gladiator III, a World War I film, and seven additional works.
Scott said he shot The Dog Stars with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt in just 34 days: “It has the speed of a television series, but it might be my best film.”
He also revealed that he is developing a World War I project based on John Harris’s novel Covenant with Death: “It has an extraordinary narrative I’ve never seen in a war film. It’s entertaining and full of class prejudice, because you have miners thrown together with middle-class men. You discover: one man dies, just like anyone else.”
Scott confirmed that Gladiator III is in the “conference room” stage, while he is also pushing forward a Bee Gees biopic and a Western titled Freewalkers. In addition, he said he is preparing a film about “pirates,” with Jacob Elordi attached to star.
Previous reports suggested that Freewalkers would focus on a Native girl who contracts measles and must battle “storms and rough men” in order to survive.
Other projects in Scott’s pipeline include Bomb, Battle of Britain, Big Dogs, and the spy thriller Queen & Country. Altogether, Scott has nine projects in active development—proving retirement is not in his vocabulary.
The story of The Dog Stars is set in the near future, when a pandemic has pushed American society to the brink of collapse. The film follows a pilot living in isolation at an airbase in Colorado with his dog and a tough Navy SEAL. Though the two men share little in common, they must stand together against intruders. When a random radio transmission comes through the pilot’s 1956 Cessna, a new hope for a better form of life is sparked. The cast includes Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, and Guy Pearce.
In another part of the interview with Dazed, Scott reflected on audiences’ relationship with cinema: “The main audience just wants to be entertained. A smaller portion wants to be educated. And if they’re intellectual? Forget it. So we’ve got three categories. I always go for something that fascinates me. I don’t say I’m an intellectual, but I guess I am. I’ve had wins and losses. I’ve never regretted anything, because in the end, everything has been successful—and that’s disappointing. If they had been successful right away, I could have seen the money.”
On his 2013 film The Counselor, which underperformed at the box office, Scott remarked: “It had the best dialogue I’d ever read. It carried the factor of people’s destruction. But audiences just want to be entertained and eat their damn popcorn.”
