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‘Chronicle’s’ Josh Trank To Direct ‘The Red Star’

Choosing between some of the biggest comic-book franchises out there is no easy task, but Josh Trank has decided his next film will be The Red Star. Trank became a hot property with his feature debut, Chronicle, a superhero-themed found-footage movie that made a financial and critical splash back in February.

Another comic book property, The Red Star might be a bit more under the radar than some of Trank’s other options, but it’s certainly more novel. Set in what author Christian Gossett describes as “mythic [Soviet] Russia,” the short-lived series explored a world much like our own, but where magic and sorcery are welded to Soviet war efforts that involve supernatural forces. Deadline reports that Jason Rothenberg, who wrote Warner’s upcoming The Twilight Zone update, will be scripting The Red Star.



Trank’s agreement to direct for Warner Bros. may have cooled the prospects of 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot, for which Trank was the top choice . Next, it was Sony trying to woo the 28-year-old, offering him the director’s chair on their long-germinating Spider-Man spin-off, Venom.

The small-budget success of Chronicle would make it seem that Trank is wary of any tentpole projects, but The Red Star could be equally epic in scope. It’ll be hard to imagine how to portray the kilometers-long Soviet warships and psychedelic imagery of the comics without a substantial budget. Then again, it’s hard to imagine any studio approaching a relatively unknown comic property set in magical Soviet Russia and thinking, “let’s give that all the money we can find.”  

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