Indiana Jones 5 director James Mangold is reportedly set to tackle a biopic about legendary silent-screen star Buster Keaton. Industry sources say he is working with 20th Century Studios on a script based on Marion Meade’s biography Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase.
This would not be the first of Mangold’s biopics: his Walk the Line (2005), about country singer Johnny Cash, earned five Oscar nominations. In 2020, he was set to direct a film about Bob Dylan, starring Timothée Hal Chalamet, but production has been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mangold also garnered much acclaim for Wolverine (2013), Logan (2017), and Ford v. Ferrari (2019), the last of which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. In 2020, he was tapped to direct the fifth installment in the Indiana Jones franchise starring Harrison Ford: the earlier four had been directed by Steven Spielberg.
Mangold started his film career in 1985 at the age of 23, when he was hired by Disney as a writer/director, where he turned out a television movie and co-wrote Oliver and Company, an animated feature. In 1995, his first feature Heavy, won the prize for best director at the Sundance Film Festival.
Apart from Charlie Chaplin, no other actor epitomizes the silent comedy era more than Keaton, whose film career spanned more than half a century until his death in 1966.
Known as “The Great Stone Face,” his deadpan persona made him one of the most recognizable faces in the annals of Hollywood, from his first appearance in The Butcher Boy (1917) to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, released the year of his death.
In the 1950s he had cameo roles in such classics as Sunset Boulevard and Around the World in 80 Days, and appeared in many television commercials and on TV variety shows. Keaton also starred in several “beach-blanket” films for American International Pictures in the 1960s.