LATEST NEWS

Terrence Malick's Tree of Life Has IMAX-Sized Dinosaurs?!

by Alex Billington
March 2, 2009
Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

Okay, so maybe this isn't as shocking as we're making it out to be, but it's an interesting discovery. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere recently pointed out an excerpt from Empire's latest issue where it mentions that director Terrence Malick's newest film, the ambitious Tree of Life, will feature dinosaurs. But before we get into all of that, I think we need a quick recap on The Tree of Life, which is Malick's fifth film following The New World in 2005. It stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, but we don't know much about the plot, besides this synopsis: "The evolution of a young man in 1950s Midwest to a disillusioned adult."

There is a much longer and more confusing synopsis that can be found on Wikipedia, but it really doesn't seem to have to do anything with dinosaurs. So what the heck is going on? As far as we know, The Tree of Life will take place in the American midwest during the 1950s (for the most part), but that still doesn't clear up anything. Here's the full quote from visual effects artist Mike Fink in the latest issue of Empire:

"We're just starting work on a project for Terrence Malick, animating dinosaurs, the film is The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It'll be showing in IMAX -- so the dinosaurs will actually be life size -- and the shots of the creatures will be long and lingering."

There's a theory that Jeffrey Wells and others have been kicking around about Malick digging up some old ideas from a project he had written in 1991 after Days of Heaven called simply Q. The story involved a creature that dreams about the evolution of the universe, however, I still don't know, or understand, how exactly that might play into The Tree of Life. And what does that title even have to do with a troubled kid anyway? Obviously this news doesn't mean we're going to see something like Terrence Malick's Jurassic Park, but I'm curious what the story is about and/or why the concept will involve dinosaurs.

The last I heard, The Tree of Life was headed to Cannes this May, where it will make its worldwide debut before hitting theaters later this year. This film also doesn't even have a US distributor yet, which makes me slightly unsure of some of these details. That bit about IMAX is also very confusing, because I know for certain that there is only one other IMAX film that hasn't been announced yet, and I know it will be a September/October film. But out of everything I can think of this year, The Tree of Life is something I doubt we'd see in IMAX. What do you make of this? Does anyone know some real information?

Tweet Pin It

Related categories: Discussion, Movie News, Rumors