'Spring Breakers' Sequel Penned by Irvine Welsh On the Way

Spring break forever, bitches! Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers is only about a year old but it's already considered a cult classic. And how could it not be with James Franco hamming it up as gangster/rapper Gator, plus a bevy of scantily-clad beauties engaging in all manner of sex, drugs, and criminal activity? Not that the $31M box office set the world on fire but at a cost of only about $5M, it makes total sense that a sequel would be on the way. Well, it's kind of a sequel.

A sequel titled Spring Breakers: The Second Coming is in the works but it doesn't appear to have any of the original crew involved yet. So why might this still be worth getting excited about? Two words: Irvine Welsh. The Trainspotting and Filth author is writing the script which will follow new spring breakers as they "do battle with an extreme militant Christian sect that attempts to convert them." Jonas Akerlund (Spun) will be directing.

Wild Bunch will be selling the film on the Cannes market later this month, and co-chief Vincent Maraval had this to say about it...

Maraval: “It’s not a direct sequel although there are allusions to some of the characters in the original". 

In other Wild Bunch news, Gaspar Noe, who directed the wildly inventive Enter the Void, has lined up his next project. At Cannes they will unveil Love, which is described as “a sexual melodrama about a boy and a girl and another girl”.

Marval: “It’s a love story, which celebrates sex in a joyous way. Gaspard feels that most films that touch on sex in traditional cinema are dark and dramatic, this will be really joyous… He says it’s a film that will give guys ‘a hard-on and make girls cry’.”

Expect "gives guys a hard-on and makes girls cry" to be all over the promos for that one.

Paul Verhoeven, who hasn't really done much since 2006's WWII thriller Black Book, is adapting Philppe Djan's novel Oh! to the big screen. The sexually-charged story centers on "a psychological game of cat-and-mouse between a businesswoman and a stalker who raped her, a crime for which she is seeking revenge."

There's also a remake of 1988's Maniac Cop which was penned by comics writer Ed Brubaker and produced by Nicholas Winding Refn. A director is expected to be announced at Cannes and it's bound to draw a ton of attention.

And lastly there are two projects coming from directors Arnaud Desplechin (Jimmy P.) and Blue Is the Warmest Color director, Abdellatif Kechiche. Desplechin will direct Three Memories from Childhood, "a portrait of a man as he looks back over three periods in his childhood and adolescence that shaped his life."And Kechiche will be at the helm for The Real Wound, an adaptation of François Bégaudeau's book about a "French-Tunisian teenage boy’s bid to lose his virginity while on holiday in the resort of Hammamet in Tunisia." [ScreenDaily]

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Trailer for 'Jimmy P' with Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric

Cannes is in full swing, and one of the many dramas looking to make an impact at the festival is Jimmy P, the first from director Arnaud Desplechin since 2008's A Christmas Tale. Famed psychoanalyst George Devereux's 1951 book Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, forms the basis of the story, but it's the presence of stars Benicio Del Toro and Mathiu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) that has it on a lot of radars.

The first trailer has arrived, and Del Toro definitely appears to be in top form even if the footage isn't all that inspiring. The true story centers on a Native American soldier returned home from WWII with schizophrenia, but when his doctors can't agree on the diagnosis, Devereux (Amalric) is called in to give an assessment. The two form a bond of friendship that goes beyond their professional relationship.

Jimmy P. will open later this year in many European markets, but has yet to gain U.S. distribution.

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