Given the impact that Nacho Vigalondo’s Timecrimes had both here and the US, where it toured festivals before finally landing in cinemas in 2008 across the pond and 2009 in the UK, it was surely only a matter of time (pun intended) before Hollywood snapped it up for a remake. But after a few years of relative silence on the project, DreamWorks has swooped into pick up the rights, with Steven Zaillian taking over scripting duties.
Zaillian has actually been involved with the American version from the start, after picking it up in early 2008 alongside United Artists, which had Tom Cruise running the show back then. Their next step was to hire Children of Men screenwriter Timothy Sexton to draft the remake.
But after that version of UA (and parent company MGM) floundered, the US script sat around, doing very little until now, with DreamWorks grabbing it and asking Zaillian to add writer to his producing duties.
Timecrimes is a twisty, brainy little thriller that finds a middle-aged bloke named Hector getting into deep temporal trouble when he spots a naked woman from afar and, through a series of complications, ends up travelling one hour into the past to save his own life.
One of the biggest “name” screenwriters in the business, Zaillian has been busy recently writing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for David Fincher (and sealing a deal to adapt The Girl Who Played with Fire) and Moneyball. He’s also got The Irishman, which Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are planning to reunite to make. It remains to be seen whether Timecrimes will make it out of development limbo, but Zaillian’s extra involvement can’t hurt its chances.