LOS ANGELES – Amid the superheroes, dinosaurs, cyborg assassins and male strippers of the summer movie season comes a drop of sustenance for the cinematic intelligentsia: the French director Claire Denis will make her first English-language film, and she is collaborating on its screenplay with the British novelist Zadie Smith.
Ms. Denis, perhaps best known for “Beau Travail,” a 1999 drama based loosely on a Herman Melville story, does not yet have a title for her new project. But the film will be set in space, according to Screen International, and Ms. Smith, the author of the acclaimed novel “White Teeth,” will help write the screenplay – her first such effort.
“White Teeth,” about two multicultural World War II veterans and their dysfunctional families, was made into a television miniseries in Britain. A film adaptation of Ms. Smith’s novel “On Beauty” is in early development.
Ms. Smith’s husband, the novelist and poet Nick Laird, will also contribute screenwriting. Oliver Dungey, a producer (“Miss Julie”) who is working on the project, told Screen International that Ms. Denis’s film would be “completely original, genuinely pushing the boundaries of art and science.”