A pair of film industry vets are taking a crack at an un-produced screenplay written by the late Stanley Kubrick. Variety reports that producers Bruce Hendricks and Galen Walker are developing the film noir thriller Lunatic At Large—one of three scripts discovered following Kubrick’s death in 1999, and one of several collaborations with pulp novelist Jim Thompson, who worked with the filmmaker on The Killing, Paths Of Glory, and Spartacus. The New York Times once described the story as “a dark and surprising mystery of sorts, in which the greatest puzzle is who, among several plausible candidates, is the true escapee from a nearby mental hospital.” Hendricks is a former president of physical production at the Walt Disney Company, where he oversaw the making of more than 250 films, including The Sixth Sense and Armageddon. Walker has over 30 years of experience as an executive, producer, and writer. While a director for the project has not been announced, the pair intend to head into production on Lunatic At Large this fall.
There have been other attempts to bring Lunatic At Large to the big screen, including a 2006 project shepherded by Kubrick’s son-in-law, Philip Hobbs, and a final draft written by Stephen R. Clarke. That iteration was set in New York in 1956 and centered on “Johnnie Sheppard, an ex-carnival worker with serious anger-management issues, and Joyce, a nervous, attractive barfly he picks up in a Hopperesque tavern scene.” In 2010, Lunatic At Large was in the news again, this time with an adaptation starring Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson. Many filmmakers have tried and failed to mount a production of Kubrick’s other unmade stories, including Cary Fukunaga, who was attached at one point to adapt Napoleon into a miniseries for HBO.