What do you do after making an expensive flop that sells out your own country in order to pay homage to Golden Age Hollywood cinema?  Do you quietly reflect?  Do you ponder what went wrong or what studio will want to make your next picture?  If you're Baz Luhrmann, then fuck no!  You buy the rights to one of the greatest novels of all time and try to make it into a movie and succeed where other have failed. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Baz Luhrmann has purchased the rights to make F. Scott Fitzgerald's immortal "The Great Gatsby".   Even better, Luhrmann wants to make the film not because it's a classic work of literature, but because it's topical.  He sees the pre-Depression story as "a wake-up call as the economy comes crashing down and another gilded age, as he sees it, comes to an end." 

Says Luhrmann, "If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation."

This may end up so untimely that it's important.  We're headed into tough economic times right now so if the film comes out before recovery, it will feel not only late, but pedantic; rubbing excess wealth in the faces of those who no longer have it.  The warning works a lot better BEFORE the bad times happen.  However, if the film arrives as the economy begins to recover, it could serve as fair warning to not let our excesses get the better of us once more. 

Nevertheless, other directors have tried to crack Gatsby and no one has ever quite managed it.  Nothing in Luhrmann's resume suggests that he'll be the one who can but I'm willing to see what he tries to do.  He promises that it won't be another seven years until this film which is good because no one wants to see an untimely "Great Gatsby" adaptation.