Ben Foster Prepping Directorial Debut With Oren Moverman Producing, Gregg Araki's Next Is Cop Thriller 'The Womb'

It's clear at this point that Ben Foster and Oren Moverman are pretty much bros for life. The actor took the lead role in Moverman's directorial debut "The Messenger," and last year cropped up with a small role in "Rampart," which marked the first film from the pair's joint production company Third Mind Pictures. While Moverman is busy on everything ranging from a script for a Brian Wilson biopic to potential directorial outings "The Terrorist Search Engine," with Jesse Eisenberg, a biopic of movie mogul David O Selznick with Ben Stiller, and period drama "The Big Blow," he'll pair with Foster to produce Steve Buscemi's Moverman-penned William Burroughs adaptation "Queer," with Guy Pearce and Kelly Macdonald, and it looks like they're going to squeeze in another collaboration this year as well.

Screen Daily report that Foster is planning to make his directorial debut later in the year, on an untitled drama that Moverman will produce alongside Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen's company Parts & Labor. There aren't any details yet, other than a shoot tentatively planned for the summer, but we imagine it'll be something fairly intense, given Foster's usual metier, and don't be surprised if the actor's longtime friend Bobby Bukowski is DP, as he was on "Rampart."

Parts & Labor have become one of the more interesting, diverse indie companies in recent years thanks to their work on "The Exploding Girl," "Cold Weather" and "Beginners," among others, and the trade revealed the rest of their promising-looking slate, of which the biggest news is probably a new film from New Queer Cinema pioneer Gregg Araki, who will make "The Womb," described as "a twisted police thriller;" for the company. The project is casting now, and Van Hoy says that the film is on "a bigger, broader scope" than anything that Araki's made before. We can't say we were huge fans of his last film, "Kaboom," but we're always interested to see what he's up to, and we're intrigued to see him work in the genre world. 

Otherwise, the company are working with Scott Rudin on the previously-announced "Red Light Winter," Adam Rapp's adaptation of his own play, which will star Mark Ruffalo and Billy Crudup as two friends who cross paths with a Dutch prostitute (Kirsten Dunst); the film is currently being financed, and should shoot late this year. They're also collaborating with Robinson Devor (horse-fucking documentary "Zoo") on "You Can't Win," a Western period piece based on the memoir of adventurer Jack Black (not that one), a Mexican-set documentary called "Narco Cultura" and the feature debut of Swedish photographer Jens Assur, entitled "Close Far Away," described as "a dramatic thriller about people's behavior in vulnerable situations." Promising stuff, all round...