Darren Aronofsky to Direct Machine Man

You know how I feel about film deals. At first, sure, everyone’s excited. It’s going to be the greatest movie ever made. You’ll be walking down the red carpet in no time, Max. You’ll be doing blow off the naked backs of strung-out starlets. But a few years later, and you know what? No starlets. Not one.

Not that it’s all about the starlets. I’m happily married. I’m just saying, it would be nice to be offered starlets. The point is, I have discovered that there’s a lot that can derail a project between sign-on and starlets. In fact, starlets seem to be the exception. Most of the time, the movie never happens.

So when the Machine Man deal happened, I tried to steel myself. “Meh,” I told people. “Not as glamorous as it sounds. Probably never go anywhere.” A few months ago, I heard Darren Aronofsky was interested in directing. “Yeah, there’s always a big name who’s interested,” I said. “Everyone’s always interested.” Then he signed on. And today it’s public, being reported in Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

Now, Aronofsky is possibly the greatest director in the world. By which I mean, if you wrote a book or a screenplay, and you wanted someone to make it into a film, you would choose him. Because many people can do smart and unsettling and entertaining, but not usually all at once.

His newest film is “Black Swan,” which premieres in the US on December 3. It’s written by Mark Heyman, who is also on board for Machine Man. So I’m basically hoping Black Swan is the best movie of all time.

It is getting harder to stay cool about this.

By the way, Aronofsky was involved with the Robocop remake before the studio imploded. So do you think he walked away with a head full of unrealized ideas about bioaugmentation or what?