We've reported on William Monahan's Mojave for a couple years, but he's been working on it for much longer.  In a recent interview, the Oscar-winning screenwriter (The Departed) said his second directorial feature was written "part time and on weekends for about 10 years now."  He finally got it finished, filmed it, and now the first three images have been released.  The film centers on a near-suicidal artist (Garrett Hedlund) who escapes into the desert to take an existential crisis head-on, only to encounter a doppelganger-like antagonist in the form of a brilliant, homicidal drifter (Oscar Isaac).  Monahan mulled over selling the script and came to the conclusion that rather than "let it go be distorted and made improperly" he would do the right thing and just make it myself and forego the money."

Hit the jump for more.  The film also stars Walton Goggins and Louise BourgoinMojave is currently making the rounds at the American Film Market to pick up distribution.

Images via Empire.

Monahan tells Empire there are difficulties in boiling down the movie to a tagline. "The tagline for Mojave, if one were to be honest," says Monahan, "would be 'Mojave... Mojave is what it is what it is.'"  Personally, I think that's a brilliant tagline, and they should totally use it.  For Monahan, he thinks the movie has a great hook if you look at the subtext:

What I've always said about this is it's man goes to the desert to kill the devil within himself and ends up bringing it back with him, within Jack. He's sedated the devil within himself and brings back the physical form of the devil…” If that’s not enough of a killer selling point for the film, we don’t know what is.

Subtext is a much harder sell, but hopefully Monahan won't have too much trouble finding buyers for his intriguing flick.