Apple has quickly been making a name for itself with its vast library of high-quality original films and series. Now, coming off their recent Best Picture win for CODA, the streamer has found their next potential awards contender. Reported exclusively by Deadline, Oscar winning director Steve McQueen’s next film Blitz is heading to Apple. McQueen will write, direct, and produce the film which is centered around the stories of Londoners during the Blitz of World War II. This was a series of bombings enacted by the Nazis that the United Kingdom endured between the of Fall 1940 and the Spring of 1941.
McQueen’s Lammas Park will produce Blitz along with Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working Title Films. Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan and Michael Schaefer of New Regency will also produce the project. This will be a reunion for McQueen and New Regency as they worked together previously on the director’s Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave and Widows. McQueen is currently under a first-look deal with New Regency.
Most film fans know McQueen for the previously mentioned Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave. The film was nominated for an additional eight Oscars, winning two more, and the nominations included McQueen for Best Director. Since then the filmmaker has kept busy directing the critically acclaimed anthology film series Small Axe as well as co-directing/producing three documentaries for Amazon and BBC – Black Power: A British Story of Resistance, Subnormal: A British Scandal, and Uprising. The director is also currently working on the documentary Occupied City which is another World War II project set in Amsterdam. However, Blitz will mark his first directed feature film since Widows in 2018.
McQueen, in all his previous work, has always had an amazing ability to connect his audience to the stories he's telling on such a complex emotional and human level. As such, there’s a lot of potential for McQueen to explore some compelling emotional beats with a story like Blitz which takes place in such a dark time in history.
All this makes the director teaming up with Apple feel perfect. Apple is coming off a Best Picture win of their own with CODA which was such a heartfelt coming-of-age story about family and love. The studio looks to continue that high caliber momentum this year with films like Cha Cha Real Smooth which recently won the U.S. Domestic Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Films like Blitz ensure that Apple’s future is bright as they continue to expand their relationships with some of Hollywood's hottest talent.
Blitz does not have a release window yet, but filming on the project is set to begin later this year.