Robert Zemeckis still planning to do The Women of Marwen with Steve Carell

November 15th 2016, 10:19am

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Robert Zemeckis has been the filmmaker of many people’s past, present and future. Movies like BACK TO THE FUTURE, FORREST GUMP and CAST AWAY have entertained audiences over the decades, and the Oscar-winner shows no signs of slowing down with his new movie ALLIED coming out this month. The big question now is what will he do next? Turns out, we’ve had the answer for years.

Cinema Blend caught up with Zemeckis to ask him what his next project will be after ALLIED, and the director answered saying he will take on a movie that has been in the works for some time, THE WOMEN OF MARWEN:

“Yeah, I'm going to be doing a movie with Steve Carell called The Women of Marwen… It's based on this documentary called Marwencol.”

We’ve been hearing about THE WOMEN OF MARWEN since 2013 with Zemeckis coming off the success of FLIGHT in 2012. The documentary it’s based on, MARWENCOL, follows a man named Mark Hogancamp who suffered severe brain damage and memory loss after being attacked one evening, and after many failed treatments was able to make a huge breakthrough by inhabiting the world of a 1/6 scale model of a Belgian town circa WWII. He filled the town with characters from his own life, using his imagination as a form of rehab. However, the last update we heard from the movie was early last year, and Zemeckis has since gone on to film THE WALK (also based on a documentary) and ALLIED. But now it seems back on track, and the director has a bold vision for it:

“I wrote it, and it's a much more… it's a movie. It takes the essence of it, and then just blows it out. It's action packed!”

I can imagine Zemeckis taking the approach of bringing Hogancamp’s creations to life, possibly via war scenes with soldiers, explaining the "action packed" bit. Granted I have no clue if that’s the actual approach he will take, but seeing as how this movie has the potential to be about the power of imagination I wouldn’t put it past him. No firm word on if this will be Zemeckis’s next project, but clearly it’s still on his mind. The man has tenacity for sure. God I love him. Was that weird?

ALLIED with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard is set for November 23.