Todd Haynes has qui­et­ly pre­pared a new mys­tery drama

At this point, it’s near­ly refresh­ing to see a major tal­ent prepar­ing a new film with­out mak­ing such a big fuss over every­thing. In our age of trail­ers for trail­ers for trail­ers, total run time announce­ments com­mand­ing an entire news cycle, and gen­er­al pro­mo­tion­al over­ex­po­sure, it comes as a ton­ic when a guy decides to make a movie, fin­ish the movie, and then announce the movie a few short months pri­or to release.

That’s exact­ly how Todd Haynes has gone about prep­ping his lat­est fea­ture – qui­et­ly, and with min­i­mal hub­bub. A press release sent out last night for­mal­ly made the announce­ment that he would unveil his lat­est effort Dark Waters lat­er this year, an increas­ing­ly rare sur­prise in a buzz indus­try obsessed with sched­ul­ing and timing.

The mys­tery will tap Mark Ruf­fa­lo, an expe­ri­enced gumshoe from his days beat­ing the pave­ment in Zodi­ac, to por­tray a deter­mined attor­ney look­ing into a string of deaths that may or may not be relat­ed to a mas­sive cor­po­ra­tion. The syn­op­sis doesn’t go into greater detail than that, but that sen­tence alone paints a pret­ty clear pic­ture – deter­mined guy pulls on a thread, attracts threats from a con­glom­er­ate behe­moth, David fells Goliath, et cetera. Sounds a bit like a gen­der-swapped Erin Brock­ovich. (Aaron Brockovich!)

With Todd Haynes, how­ev­er, it can’t pos­si­bly be that sim­ple. What’s clear at present is that he’s assem­bled a strong sup­port­ing cast, includ­ing Anne Hath­away, Tim Rob­bins, Bill Camp, and emerg­ing star William Jack­son Harp­er (last seen squab­bling about acad­e­mia in Mid­som­mar). This being a Haynes pic­ture, expect some chimeri­cal flights of fan­ta­sy, or at the very least, painstak­ing genre homage nod­ding to the ​’50s or ​’70s.

Addi­tion­al research reveals that this film’s premise comes from a true sto­ry, in which one inde­fati­ga­ble attor­ney suc­cess­ful­ly took on the Du Pont chem­i­cal empire – you know, the creepy rich weir­does from Fox­catch­er. Haynes has tack­led fac­tu­al accounts before, though he’s gussied them up with strokes of sur­re­al­ism, expres­sion­ism, and what­ev­er oth­er ‑isms he might feel com­pelled to explore. Just don’t expect the film­mak­er to take the most direct path through this narrative.

Dark Waters will come to cin­e­mas in the US on 22 Novem­ber. A date for the UK has yet to be set.