As Deadline reports, juggling between recent projects like The Fabelmans, director Steven Spielberg is preparing a new project. It will be a new original film based around the character of Frank Bullitt, played by Steve McQueen in the 1968 thriller Bullitt. The only known details are that Spielberg is set to produce the film alongside Kristie Macosko Krieger with Josh Singer on board to pen the script.
In the McQueen original, Frank Bullitt is a no-nonsense San Francisco cop on the hunt for the mob kingpin that killed his witness. Considered one of McQueen’s more iconic roles, the film delivers one of the most famous chase scenes in cinema history. Sources were clear this is not a remake of that film, but a new original idea centered on the character. Steve McQueen’s kids, Chad and Molly McQueen will executive produce.
Insiders say Spielberg had been toying with the idea to direct a film based on the character for some time and came close last year to making it his follow-up to West Side Story, but had to negotiate with the McQueen estate for the rights to the character before he would attach as a director. With the negotiations taking longer than expected, Spielberg shifted his focus to directing The Fablemans, the film which is loosely based on the director’s childhood growing up in Arizona, and moved off of this film. Once filming wrapped on Fablemans, he circled back to the Frank Bullitt project and recently tapped Singer to pen the script.
