La La Land‘s night at the Oscars will live in infamy, but Damien Chazelle had a pretty good night himself, picking up Best Director at the tender age of 32. With that kind of precocious talent and success under his belt, he’ll have free reign to make whatever he wants next.
We know it will be a film that’s been rattling around his mind since before La La Land, First Man, a biopic of Neil Armstrong‘s life between 1961 and 1969, chronicling NASA’s mission to land a man on the moon. Ryan Gosling is already on board to play Armstrong, and the film now has a settled release date of October 12, 2018.
Based on the book of the same name by James R. Hansen, the script will be penned by Spotlight writer, Josh Singer, and will reportedly be a “visceral, first-person account” of NASA’s historic mission.
Chazelle has proven himself to be a tremendous talent, so it’s hard to expect anything less than brilliance with this. While it’s a far different project to La La Land, Chazelle did expertly explore the drive to be great and the sacrifices it takes in Whiplash, so this looks a natural fit.
Chazelle has been planning the project for a while, in fact telling Collider way back in 2014: “I sort of hesitate to call it a biopic. It’s a mission movie. It’s purely about the landing… It will cover about six years. It’ll start with him joining NASA and will end in ’69 with the landing. So it’s purely a process movie, it’s a movie about building up to that achievement”.
Sounds great. The film will likely aim for a strong awards push next year. While Chazelle begins work on that, Gosling will keep up his track record of working with acclaimed directors by appearing in Terrence Malick‘s Song To Song and Denis Villeneuve‘s Blade Runner 2049, both set for release in the coming months.
#Peace.Love.FirstMan
