Michael Shannon to Make Directorial Debut with ‘Eric Larue’

Deadline has reported that Michael Shannon will be directing his first feature film with an adaptation of Brett Neveu‘s 2002 play Eric Larue. Neveu will also be writing the screenplay for the film.

Production will begin this year in Wilmington, North Carolina, after withdrawing out of Arkansas, due to the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which caused the state to enact its trigger law to ban almost every abortion.

In a statement, Shannon expressed that “Eric Larue has so much to say about our country, about the way we try (sometimes quite ineptly) to deal with the trauma of living here, which is so insidious because it does not present itself overtly in concrete terms most of the time.

Like most great stories, Eric Larue plays at the macro and a micro level simultaneously. When I read the screenplay, I immediately knew I had to direct it. I saw it. I heard it. I could feel it. And I wanted to make sure that it received just the right touch in all its aspects, because at the end of the day, it is an extraordinarily delicate thing.

I find it interesting to align with artists possessing the most vivid imaginations, the most stringent yet empathetic senses of morality, and the most passionate and rigorous disciplines to create worlds and stories that contribute to our experience and understanding of what it is to be a human being in this day and age and, particularly, this country.”

Seth Green will be co-producing the film, alongside Karl Hartman, Jina Panebianco, Jeff Nichols, R. Wesley Sierk III, Byron Wetzel, Meghan Schumacher, Joh D. Straley and Declan Baldwin.

Source: Deadline