Variety reports that Manuel Martin Cuenca is set to direct the psychological thriller Canibal, a further addition to Spain’s burgeoning genre auteur canon.
Cuenca’s first venture into genre, Canibal, reunites him with long-term co-scribe Alejandro Hernandez and DP Rafael de la Uz. It freely adapts a short story by Cuba’s Humberto Arenal turning on a man who kills and eats men and women, until he discovers love. “This is not a Hannibal Lecter. He knows what he does is wrong. But he just can’t stop,” said Cuenca. Canibal is being written “in the vein of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, where you gradually discover the character’s real motives,” Cuenca said. Now on a second-draft screenplay, it will be shot in 2012 in a tourist-heavy region — possibly the South of France or Malaga.
Look for more on this one soon!