Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is set to make her return to direction with her newly announced Netflix-exclusive project. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bigelow has agreed to helm a feature based on David Koepp’s upcoming novel Aurora. This will be Bigelow’s first project as a director since her last release, Detroit, released in 2017. Her only credit after Detroit is that of an executive producer for J.C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier, which was written by her longtime collaborator Mark Boal. Bigelow is known for some of the most acclaimed films of all time and is the first woman to win an Oscar in the Best Director category.
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Aurora will be produced by Bigelow’s producing partner on films like The Hurt Locker, Greg Shapiro, and Gavin Polone. Polone has produced Koepp’s writing as well as directorial works such as Secret Window. Furthermore, Koepp, who is famous for writing the screenplay for blockbusters Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, ill himself pen the screenplay for his book’s adaptation.
Sources (via THR) report that the project would cost Netflix over a hundred million dollars, and may enter production stages based on a pre-decided progress timeline for the film.
Koepp’s Transition to Novels
Aurora is the novel debut for Koepp and its release is due on June 7 this year from HarperCollins. The book has already gained positive responses from fellow author Stephen King as well as a screenwriter and The Queen’s Gambit creator Scott Frank. Frank, sharing his experience, said:
Koepp’s last project was director Steven Soderbergh’s KIMI. Koepp is also working on his reunion project with director Steven Spielberg, tentatively titled Blackhawk. The film will be an adaptation of the DC Comics storyline of the character Blackhawk will be set in the DC Extended Universe. The project has been on Spielberg’s radar for years and Koepp has recently updated that a version of the script approved by the team is ready. Due to the changes Warner Bros. brought to the DCEU, the project has faced a setback and Spielberg’s involvement as a director in it remains unconfirmed.
There’s a reason David Koepp is the most successful screenwriter of all time. It’s because he’s one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Aurora is up there with his best: scary, funny, and thought-provoking.
Aurora seems to be a blend of a sci-fi thriller and a family drama, where a woman must deal with her estranged marriage, her stubborn, teenage son, and an estranged sibling relationship with her wealthy brother, all amidst a solar event that has caused a global blackout. It is most probable that Aurora will be Koepp’s next before Blackhawk is set in motion at DC Films.
According to Goodreads, the official synopsis of the book reads:
In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son. Then the lights go out–not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood. Across the country lives Aubrey’s estranged brother, Thom. A fantastically wealthy, neurotically over-prepared Silicon Valley CEO, he plans to ride out the crisis in a gilded desert bunker he built for maximum comfort and security. But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of several long-overdue reckonings–which not everyone will survive . . .
