Mike Fleming

Mandalay Pictures announced that they’ve attached Darren Aronofsky to direct Machine Man, based on a Max Barry novel that will be adapted by Aronofsky’s Black Swan accomplice, Mark Heyman. Cathy Schulman will produce for Mandalay and Barry will be exec producer. Barry’s publishing one page per day in real time as an online serial, and the results will be published by Vintage Books in spring, 2011. Barry, author of the cutting edge Company and Jennifer Government, has time to publish with this unusual strategy. Aronofsky will be busy, been set in a $5 million against 5% gross deal to direct X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 for 20th Century Fox. Production starts next year in New York, where both Aronofsky and Jackman live, before the action transplants to Japan. Christopher McQuarrie wrote the script. In Machine Man, Charlie is a gadget geek and engineer at a forward-thinking tech firm, and he decides to systematically replace his weak fleshy parts with high-end titanium performance upgrades that he has designed. Turns out Charlie isn’t the only one with plans for his superior parts. Aronofsky was going to do a remake of Robocop, and it seems there are parallels. Aronofsky is repped at CAA.