Lynne Ramsay Writing an ‘Epic Environmental Horror’

By Damon Wise

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – After a six-year hiatus between her acclaimed 2011 Cannes entry “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and its follow-up “You Were Never Really Here” – which has eight nominations at the British Independent Film Awards and and four nominations for the Indie Spirit Awards – Scottish director Lynne Ramsay is planning to return to work “sooner rather than later.” Ramsay, currently serving on James Gray’s jury at the Marrakech Film Festival, looks set to direct her first original script since “Ratcatcher” in 1999.

Speaking to the BIFA website , Ramsay said, “I wrote 160 pages of a script just after doing all the press for ‘You Were Never Really Here,’ because it’s hard to keep talking about the same films. But I was really inspired by making [that] film, so I’ve started writing this epic environmental horror thing. I don’t know what it is yet, I just kept writing and didn’t look back.”

Ramsay revealed that she was “working on a few other projects as well.” She added: “They’re all quite exciting, but they’re just in the writing process at the moment.” Nevertheless, she said, after the disappointment of “Jane Got a Gun,” which she left due to creative and budgetary issues in 2013, she hoped there would not a six-year wait for the next one. “I don’t want [to leave] a big gap,” she said. “I don’t really take time off, it’s just that some things have worked out and some things haven’t. It’s just the nature of the beast, really, but you learn something from all of them, even if they don’t work out.”

As to the nature of the other projects, Ramsay was giving nothing away. “I want every film to be different,” she said. “I’d love to make a comedy. People go, ‘Oh, your work’s so dark.’ I’m like, ‘Is it?’ Because I always put some kind of comedy elements [in] as well. You’re always exploring as a filmmaker, y’know? But it takes a while to make films, unfortunately. Especially if you write them as well.”