Unproduced Stanley Kubrick to Be Directed by World War Z Helmer

Marc Forster will direct a film based on Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 screenplay The Downslope. The film will be the first in a planned trilogy based on Kubrick’s script.

Forster will also produce the trilogy along with Lauren Selig, Barry Levine and Reneé Wolfe. Selig initiated the project with producers and rights holders Phil Hobbs and Steve Lanning, who are also serving as producers on the project. The Kubrick family is supporting the project.

Kubrick wrote The Downslope following the release of his Fear and Desire, and prior to directing his WWI period piece Paths of Glory. The anti-war story focuses on a bitter, strategic series of Civil War battles in the Shenandoah Valley between Union General George Armstrong Custer and Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby, known as the Gray Ghost for his stealth and elusiveness. His cavalrymen, known as Mosby’s Rangers, continually outsmarted the much larger enemy forces in a sequence of raids, which enraged Custer and eventually created a fierce cycle of revenge between the two men.

Kubrick’s script is based on historical events. The other films in the planned trilogy will expand upon Kubrick’s original story and journey west, as post-war Americans settled the new frontier, delivering on the country’s unbending ambitions and dreams of Manifest Destiny.

“I am indebted to Stanley Kubrick and his visionary films. It is an honor and a huge responsibility to take on this project, and we’re thankful to his family for their support,“ says Forster. "This is a powerful work, an epic story, with its psychological landscape of brother pitted against brother, and friend against friend. We believe it will be an incredibly interesting trilogy, and a great experience sharing our mutual passion of Kubrick’s vision.”

Forster most recently directed Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z. He’s currently directing All I See Is You from his own script. The film stars Blake Lively as a blind woman who begins to learn disturbing things about her husband (Jason Clarke) after her sight is restored. He’s repped by CAA, Management 360 and Lichter, Grossman.