Terrence Malick, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn...dinosaurs?

By now we’ve become accustomed to Terrence Malick’s secrecy with his new projects. The famously reclusive director has made just five films in 40 years, and for him to follow The New World and The Thin Red Line so closely with another movie this year is miraculous enough that most of us are happy to leave him to it.

That said, an FX guru evidently not in the know about Malick’s tight lips let loose to Empire that he’s currently working on dinosaurs for The Tree of Life, the new Malick film that will star Sean Penn and Brad Pitt. In the article, which for some reason is not online, the artist is quoted that he’s “just starting work on a project for Terrence Malick, animating dinosaurs, the film is The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It’ll be showing in IMAX — so the dinosaurs will actually be life size — and the shots of the creatures will be long and lingering.”

This is certainly a surprise, because although Malick is an intensely visual filmmaker, his movies tend to resist special effects in favor of natural realism. But over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells says the description of the FX work rings a bell and recalls an old project Malick once tried to develop that involved a dinosaur that sleeps and dreams in "a sea of magma," with a story that spans millennia. If that sounds silly (or dangerously close to The Fountain), you need only watch one of Malick’s films to know this is the guy to make it work.

Related links:
News: Terrence Malick negotiating to start shooting in March
Ctrl-V: The 29 Most Anticipated Movies of 2009
Feature: Undertow: Strange Sounds and Southern Fried Realism

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