If the pairing of Tim Burton and Kazuo Ishiguro feels like something you’ve already heard about happening, it’s not hard to figure out why. While the director and the writer haven’t actually worked together before, Jenna Ortega—star of Burton’s Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice—will soon headline Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun. So the association is there. And now it’s actually crystallizing into a real project.
Deadline reports that Burton and Ishiguro may team up on a film they will direct and write, respectively.
“Plot details are being kept under wraps,” the trade writes, “though multiple sources say it would be set in post-World War II Japan. Sources also say this [is] an original script by Ishiguro and not based on a previous or upcoming novel.”
So far, there’s no distributor attached, nor any other talent, including who might star in the movie.
Deadline also notes that “While it has not been confirmed whether this would be the director’s next film since it is technically still in development, it is a project he has given the most attention to since production on Wednesday recently ended.”
Wednesday season three is due to hit Netflix in 2027.
Klara and the Sun, starring Ortega as the android “artificial friend” of an ailing teenage girl, was directed and co-written by Waititi. It hits theaters October 23. Other Ishiguro adaptations that have made it to screens include The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go; Guillermo del Toro is also said to be developing a stop-motion animated take on The Buried Giant.
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