“I get sent scripts and books, and I get pitched things,” says the filmmaker. “For me, it’s about stories and ideas. There are a few things that I’m developing. I’m developing The Odyssey at Lions Gate which is a real strong possibility, and could even be a franchise. There’s also a project called The Dive, which I am developing with Jen [Lawrence], which is about free divers. It’s a very cool project.”
The James Cameron-produced drama is based on the true story of free-divers, Francisco “Pipin” Ferreras, and his wife, Audrey Mestre, who competed to travel as deeply as possible underwater on a single breath of air. “I would say that Jennifer needs some swimming training though,” laughs Francis Lawrence. “She’s a bit of a sloppy swimmer right now, and she would need some swimming training.”
As well as writing a script with breakout Trainwreck star and comedienne, Amy Schumer, Jennifer Lawrence is also gearing up with her own production company, and her Hunger Games director has been serving as something of a mentor. “She came by the edit room a bit to learn a little as she hadn’t been around the edit before,” the filmmaker tells FilmInk. “She wanted to see the kind of things that we can do, so she sat around for a couple of days and watched us cut scenes and asked questions. She’s interested in different things. She talks occasionally to me about lenses and the side of things that she doesn’t know much about.”
As is typical of Hollywood, however, all these Lawrence-Lawrence productions are in a state of flux. “The scripts are all being written, and you never know,” says Francis Lawrence. “You have to look at people’s schedules and scripts and budgets, so it’s early days on all of these things.”
