New Moon Director Plants Seed for ‘The Gardener’

Less than a week ago, New Moon director Chris Weitz was talking about throwing in the towel in his directing career, likely after an unfriendly experience working on the glittery vampire flick and The Golden Compass. Now that the film has made more than $250 million worldwide already, he’s changed his tune and seems to be talking up more projects.

Chiefly among these projects is The Gardener, a script he co-wrote with Eric Eason that he wants to produce through rapidly expanding label Summit Entertainment. Variety is fairly skimpy on script details, but does give a bland summarization: “the picture is about a hard-working immigrant who lives in Los Angeles and his efforts to protect his son … ‘there are no werewolves or vampires, just a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles,’ Weitz said.” No kidding!

Weitz wants to begin filming in March or April 2010, which could very feasibly happen considering the fact that New Moon made serious bank. Love or hate the movie, you have to admit that he didn’t totally fumble the directing process. I found his work pretty bland but inoffensive — he’s a made-for-TV director that has been handed several fairly huge franchises and for the most part hasn’t cracked under pressure.

That said, I look forward to a smaller film like The Gardener from the director, in which we will be able to tell if Weitz truly has some control over his actors.