Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson are Lunatics at Large for Kubrick project

Looks like a new film from Stanley Kubrick will be coming our way.

…wait, what?

A lost treatment that was commissioned by Stanley Kubrick from author and sometimes collaborator Jim Thompson (THE KILLING, PATHS OF GLORY) will get to be seen on the big screen. After the director’s death in 1999, the manuscript entitled LUNATIC AT LARGE and was found by Kubrick’s son-in-law Philip Hobbs. He came upon the treatment while searching Kubrick’s vast library.

The film already has two stars attached, Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson. It’s a period film described as a dark and surprising mystery to figure out who amongst a group is an escapee from a nearby mental hospital. Here is are the details from a 2006 NY Times article:

“Set in New York in 1956, it tells the story of 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. There’s a newsboy who flashes a portentous headline, a car chase over a railroad crossing with a train bearing down, and a romantic interlude in a spooky, deserted mountain lodge. The great set piece is a nighttime carnival sequence in which Joyce, lost and afraid, wanders among the tents and encounters a sideshow’s worth of familiar carnie types: the Alligator Man, the Mule-Faced Woman, the Midget Monkey Girl, the Human Blockhead, with the inevitable noggin full of nails.”

The synopsis came from a fleshed out treatment written in 2006 penned by Stephen R. Clarke. Back in 2006, director Chris Palmer was going to make the film his feautre debut. It isn’t known if either are still attached to the film. The project was resurrected today by a simple tweet from Production weekly saying, “Scarlett Johansson & Sam Rockwell attached to star in Lunatic At Large based on an original story by novelist Jim Thompson & Stanley Kubrick”.