Julie Taymor Set to Adapt New Films TRANSPOSED HEADS, THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

The Daily Beast reports that Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor is in the process of  developing two new films, one an adaptation of Thomas Mann's 'Transposed Heads' and the other, an update of 'The Flying Dutcham' to be called 'Riders on the Storm'.

'Transposed Heads' is described as "a retelling of a legend involving two people who behead themselves, only to be restored to the wrong bodies." Taymor's version of 'Dutchman' will be set in the present day and will center on "a man who cannot love without dying, and winds up falling for a woman who is tough, hard-headed, a great athlete, and emotionally not all there." Commented the director, "I think the times are right for a woman, a lead woman role, where she's enormously flawed."

In 1998, Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony® Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony® for Best Costumes, for her landmark production of The Lion King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor's direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask and puppet designs. In Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Taymor served as director and co-book writer.

Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, nominated for five Tony® Awards. Other theatre work includes The Green Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Transposed Heads and Liberty's Taken.

Taymor's feature film directorial debut, Titus, starred Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming. In 2002, her biographical film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, earned six Academy Award® nominations, winning two. She took on the music of the Beatles, and earned a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, in Across the Universe.

Photo credit: Walter McBride