Best of What's Next 2009: John Hillcoat [Filmmaker]

Photo by Macall Polay

Hometown: Brighton, England

Films: The Proposition, The Road (fall 2009)

For Fans Of: Sam Peckinpah, Terrence Malick, David Fincher

Few who’ve seen the slick, frenetically edited videos John Hillcoat made for artists like Maroon 5 and Depeche Mode would guess that the director is also responsible for deliberate, character-driven films like 2005’s The Proposition. His third feature and the first to garner attention in America, the movie was written and scored by his close friend Nick Cave and Cave’s bandmate Warren Ellis, and loosely based on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Hillcoat’s longtime dream of directing a proper adaptation of a McCarthy novel came true in 2006, when he was offered a chance to helm the film version of The Road (out this fall) before the book was even published.

What’s Next? Hillcoat is hoping to work on a gangster movie, most likely in close collaboration with Cave and Ellis. “It’s a rural Goodfellas-type thing about the footsoldiers of the Prohibition era in the backwoods, supporting the Al Capones in the city,” Hillcoat says.

Watch the trailer for The Road.

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