Todd Field has not directed a movie since 2006 – but plans are in place for him to finally emerge once again. Cate Blanchett (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Thor: Ragnarok) is set to star in TAR, the latest movie from the acclaimed writer/producer/director of In the Bedroom and Little Children.

Deadline reports that Blanchett will lead the cast of TAR, a drama that Field is writing and directing for Focus Features. Details about the movie are scarce at the moment – we have no idea who Blanchett will be playing, and the plot is still shrouded in mystery, though we know it will be set in Berlin – but I expect the news that Field is this far along in the process of making a new movie may itself be enough to excite a certain corner of film fandom.

When Field was a kid, he helped invent Big League Chew bubblegum during his time a batboy for Kurt Russell’s dad’s minor league baseball team. None of that has literally anything to do with anything in this story, but I just learned about it while researching him for this piece and thought it absolutely deserved to be passed along to you.

Back to the relevant stuff: Field acted for directors like Stanley Kubrick, Carl Franklin, Dyan Cannon, Penelope Spheeris, Nicole Holofcener, and Jan de Bont before breaking into writing and directing feature films himself with 2001’s In the Bedroom, which immediately launched him into the upper echelon of the up-and-coming independent filmmakers of that era. The movie earned five Oscar nominations, including two for Field: Best Picture (he was a producer) and Best Adapted Screenplay (he was a co-writer). Five years later, Field followed that movie up with Little Children, a devastating drama starring Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson that earned three more Oscar nominations, including one for Field (again as a co-writer).

TAR appears to be the first feature that Field will write himself. And Blanchett is obviously one of the most exciting performers of her generation and very much an awards darling in her own right (she’s won two Oscars so far), so this collaboration sounds like the type of pairing that will result in exactly the type of adult-centric drama that we often lament Hollywood does not make very often anymore. Blanchett will soon appear in Eli Roth’s Borderlands, Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, James Gray’s Armageddon Time, and Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley.

Production is expected to begin on TAR this September.

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