![]() ![]() We spend so much time watching stuff that for something to connect is quite a task. I don’t care about something which shows technical flair the winner will have to show some originality. When I did ‘Tutankhamun,’ I had not done British television in a long time, and I was surprised by how centralized the control was.”Īs president of the El Gouna jury, he said he’s looking for films, “that move me. This whole industry has become more controlled than it used to be. “It’s important to have fun rather than executives looking over your shoulder the whole time. “I’m not interested in doing the standard episodic stuff out of the U.K.,” explained Webber. The British director of “Hannibal Rising” and “Emperor” admits he doesn’t have such fond memories of shooting the miniseries “Tutankhamun” for Britain’s ITV. “When I got the call to do it, it sounded like a crazy adventure, and I like crazy adventures.” Its success has “partly been because it’s written from an Arabic rather than Ottoman point of view,” Webber said. Webber is riding high in the Arab world, after the recent unveiling of his Arabic-language television series “Kingdoms of Fire,” about the reign of the Ottoman Empire’s Selim I and Mamluk Sultanate’s Tuman Bay II, which aired on MBC channels. So, I had two screens set up, with two video feeds, and it was an enormous pain, frankly.” “The producer didn’t want me to travel and they couldn’t get insurance for me. ![]() “The studio and actor were in Madrid, while I was in Andalusia,” Webber said. It was the only shoot Webber has done during the COVID-19 hiatus. During the lockdown, he shot a trailer for a Spanish-language television series that will be pitched to Spanish broadcasters in the coming weeks. It’s why Webber has several irons in the fire at one-time. Sometimes, films like this can take 10 years to get to the screen.” “The world isn’t as interested in films about artists as it was when I made ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring.’ The market has changed. “We’ve come very close a number of times, but it can be tricky with a film like that,” Webber said. The period drama set in post-Napoleonic France, centering on the artist and enfant-terrible Théodore Géricault, whose best-known painting is “The Raft of the Medusa,” was set to go into production in 2017 with Pierce Brosnan, Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave attached. ![]() Webber said he is still trying to bring “The Medusa” to movie theaters. Webber also updated Variety on the state of play of his long gestating “The Medusa” project, as well as revealing that he is working on a spread of projects, one of which is a Spanish television series idea, which he shot a trailer for remotely during the global pandemic. ![]()
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