New Van Gogh Movie in the Works

As Sherlock Holmes once said in A Study in Scarlet, "There's nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before." 

Another bio-pic of Vincent Van Gogh is currently in the works, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Filming is set to begin in 2014 with a tentative release date of 2015.  Rutger Hauer (best known for playing a homicidal replicant in Blade Runner) has reportedly signed on as executive producer.  The tentative title is Vincent.  It is planned to be an English-language film.  It's planned to be shot in several European locations including France, the Netherlands and England.

Despite a proliferation of stage shows, documentaries (like the one pictured) and telemovies, there have been few English language films to hit the screen.  The last I can think of is Vincent and Theo (1990) directed by Robert Altman.  That movie focused on the last five years or so of his life, while this movie is apparently going to cover Vincent's entire life.

The movie is to tie in with the 125th anniversary of Vincent's tragic death in 1890.  So far, an estimated five years has gone into researching the movie.

Now that we've read the plans for the movie, let's see what the final result turns out to be.

Our Vincent would have loved that his life generated so many movies.  He was so constantly viewed as a failure that anyone highlighting his life would have boggled his mind (but in a good way.)  Then again, motion pictures as we know them -- even silent films -- first appeared after Vincent's death.  The only "films" were on phenakistoscope discs that Vincent probably never got to see because that would have cost money.