Cinematical

The guy who wrote Jesus' Son and Face, Oren Moverman, has fallen off the radar over the last 5 years, only to explode with a slew of new writing projects, including two biopics -- Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There and Interrupted, about Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray. He's just added one more to the pile to change things up, an adaptation of Orson Scott Card's recent novel -- Empire. The film will be a Joel Silver production under Warner Bros., the second Card adaptation for the company in recent months, as they're also bringing Ender's Game to the big screen.

The story is set in the near future, when the United States has gone into chaos after the assassination of the president and vice president. The former is killed by a rocket launcher that fires into the south wall of the West Wing, and more creatively, the VP dies when a dump truck, of all things, backs up into his limo. The country is flung "into civil war and a team of special forces operatives try to unravel the conspiracy and save the country." Moverman says: "The premise is balanced by an entertaining storyline that is not some dark and foreboding polemic." Considering the death-by-garbage thing, I can only imagine what the rest of the book reads. But truthfully, I'd rather have a flick on Card's family. According to Wikipedia, it's pretty interesting. His ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and his family later became big LDS'ers (Mormons), some of whom fled the U.S. for Canada years ago to keep up their polygamy practices.