Director Steven Soderbergh is not the sort of person to sit around moping. Renowned for the speed at which he works, he’s also well known for doing things that make studios nervous. That resulted in him stepping away from directing a film version of Man From UNCLE last week after disagreements with Warner Bros. Now he’s already found a replacement to shoot before he moves on to his planned Liberace biopic next summer.

THR reports that director Steven Soderbergh is now re-teaming with Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for a new project entitled The Bitter Pill. Little is known about the storyline of the movie, except that it will be set in the world of psychopharmacology, the scientific field which looks at how drugs affect the mind. The Playlist adds that it originated in research Burns did for the TV series Wonderland, and that Burns himself originally intended to direct.

The writer has said that it, “deals with people and their moods. It’s about how we as a society can’t tolerate sadness and what that makes us vulnerable to.” The Bitter Pill is supposedly a thriller somewhat in the vein of Fatal Attraction, and Burns says the film has a definite twist.

The project is currently being pitched to several studios, but it’s believed Soderbergh wants to set it up quickly so he can shoot in before the Liberace movie.

General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser

Steven Soderbergh is a man who doesn’t like to compromise his vision, and as his vision often involves idiosycratic or unusual approaches to subjects, that often leads to him butting heads with studios. For quite a while now he’s been attached to a big screen version of The Man From UNCLE at Warner Bros, the studio where he made the Ocean’s movies, but now he’s bailed on the movie.

However recently he’s been having a bit of casting trouble. George Clooney had to drop out as he’s having surgery and since then casting has been extremely problematic. Soderbergh wanted Michael Fassbender and Joel Kinnaman, but Warner didn’t. The studio then managed to irritate the director by working out deals with both those actors for other movies.

Various names, like Bradley Cooper, Joel Edgerton and Channing Tatum have been mooted, but it’s not known how close any of them really were to landing roles. Others, such as Johnny Depp and Matt Damon, were interested but couldn’t do the film due to scheduling issues. It appears finidng someone who was free and who was acceptable to both sides became virtually impossible if they were going to keep to the idea of shooting early next year.

Then Warner offered a budget of only $60 million, which Soderbergh felt simply wasn’t enough to do justice to the world of UNCLE, especially as the studio wants the film to be the beginning of a franchise. And so Soderbergh bailed.

Don’t worry though, the director has plenty to keep him busy, with Haywire out in January and the Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra to prepare for.

What this means for Man From UNCLE isn’t clear, so we’ll have to wait and see whether Warner tries to find another director or just gives up on the long-gestating project.

General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser