Damien Chazelle sets his sights on Old Hol­ly­wood for his next film

Damien Chazelle had a bit of a stum­ble with his last fea­ture, First Man. The film­mak­er had estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as an up-and-com­er to watch on the mer­it of three films based around the joy of music and the glitz of show­biz, but his detour into the world of sci­ence and engi­neer­ing left many crit­ics and view­ers cold.

What a relief, then, that The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has this morn­ing announced that Chazelle will return to his wheel­house for his next fea­ture-length under­tak­ing. Para­mount has offi­cial­ly laid claim to the next film de Chazelle, a dra­ma set dur­ing the glo­ry days of Old Hollywood.

Baby­lon – pre­sum­ably titled as a ref­er­ence to Ken­neth Anger’s com­pendi­um of Tin­sel­town scan­dal Hol­ly­wood Baby­lon – takes place just as the enter­tain­ment indus­try begins the town-wide changeover from silent pic­tures to talkies, and fol­lows the ris­ing and falling for­tunes of those stars scram­bling to stay rel­e­vant and employed.

Two tal­ents have been ten­ta­tive­ly attached to the project, with­out any ink-on-paper com­mit­ments: the first is Emma Stone, who’d be slat­ed to play the screen idol and sex sym­bol Clara Bow, and the sec­ond is Brad Pitt, rumored to por­tray a fic­tion­al­ized fig­ure (though the THR notice cites a source that asserts the char­ac­ter has been mod­eled after John Gilbert, a silent-era star unable to make the tran­si­tion to sound film).

This project sounds like an appe­tiz­ing prospect, to be cer­tain, but the bad news is that Para­mount has sched­uled the film for a release on Christ­mas Day, 2021. It’ll be a lit­tle over two years until the gen­er­al pub­lic can lay eyes on the film, but when that day does final­ly come, this will be a capital‑E Event the likes of which a movie­go­er doesn’t see so much any more.

It takes a tal­ent with a lot of cachet to com­man­deer a rumored $80 mil­lion for an orig­i­nal-con­cept script; here’s hop­ing he pulls it off.