Director Shane Carruth has his devoted followers after his indie darlings Primer and Upstream Color, and now they’ll need him to spread the word about how much they love him because the guy is going to a much bigger audience with his next planned feature, The Modern Ocean. The writer/director/cinematographer/producer/actor/composer has signed with WME, and Deadline reports that they’re helping him to get his big-budget, nautical action film off the ground.

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Image via erpbFilm

However, Carruth being Carruth, don’t expect him to suddenly transform into a faceless blockbuster director. If anything, his lofty intentions and vision are very much in play for Modern Ocean. He told The Playlist:


"I'm constantly interested in the politics, interactions between different personalities, different characters. That's what this boils down to: it erupts into a big action film, essentially, but the reasons why it does are the reasons the story exists…That characters are unable to get aligned is because they're all pointed in different directions, they all have slightly different motives. And that's not always known to the group."

He went on to say:

"...we're not tackling the Somalian pirates angle," he clarified about his picture. "When we deal with skirmishes, we know the motivation and it's always within its set of characters. The skirmishes escalate into full-scale naval battles using these improvised weapons on these cargo ships and so it's not trying to make a commentary about pirates. We are a world of ourselves, unto ourselves, in 'Modern Ocean.' "

It’s that last line about “a world of ourselves, unto ourselves,” where you know you’re dealing with Carruth, and I’m curious to see how they plan to sell and package this film to financiers. I love it when an auteur gets some backing, and hopefully this will allow Carruth to tackle things he couldn’t in his previous films. While I haven’t personally connected with his pictures in the past, I respect their craft, and I’m excited to see what happens with The Modern Ocean.

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