According to an announcement at CinemaCom, Paramount will be backing Damien Chazelle’s next film, despite the red ink the studio incurred in producing his Babylon, which reportedly lost some $87 million. Few details are available about the new project, but it reportedly will be set in a prison and will be scripted by the director himself.

Chazelle will be producing the film with his spouse Olivia Hamilton via their Wild Chickens entity. Before Babylon, he had won a Best Director Oscar for La La Land, a 2016 expose of Hollywood debauchery starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. At 32, he was the youngest director to receive an Academy Award. He had earlier received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Whiplash (2014), a dramatic feature that was his breakout film. Chazelle also directed First Man (2018), a biopic about the first moon landing that starred Ryan Gosling as astronaut Neil Armstrong. .

The award-winning director had hinted a few months ago that he was writing a new script but with some hesitation stemming from Babylon’s poor showing at the box-office. In a podcast on Talking Pictures, Chazelle was quoted as saying: “I’ve been sort of busy writing. So I’ll get a taste of how it’s changed or not once I get to finish this script and try to get it made. I’m in a sort of trepidatious state of mind, but I have no illusions. I won’t get a budget of Babylon size any time soon, or at least not on this next one.”

Chazelle added, “Certainly, in financial terms, Babylon didn’t work at all. You try to not have that effect what you’re doing creatively, but, at some level, it can’t help but affect it. But maybe that’s okay? I have very mixed mind about it. Maybe I won’t be able to get this one made. We’ll have to wait and see.”

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