A year ago, it actually looked like Darren Aronofsky's next movie would be the X-Men spin-off sequel The Wolverine.  That didn't happen, obviously, and rather than getting his adamantium on, the director has been trying get his Old Testament epic Noah off the ground.  One essential part of making a movie based on the story of Noah's Ark and the flood requires a proper Noah, and it looks very much like that Noah is going to end up being Russell Crowe.

As Superman is to superheroes, Steven Spielberg is to directors.  He's the biggest, the most immediately identifiable by the vast majority of moviegoers, and he's the first guy people think of when they hear the word "director."  It makes a certain kind of sense, then, that the biggest director around would be attracted to one of the biggest stories ever told.  According to Deadline, The Bearded One is nearing a deal with Warner Bros to direct Gods and Kings, a new take on the tale of Moses that frames the Old Testament figure principally as a warrior.

If you haven't effectively repressed the memory of medical dismemberment, psychotic breaking, imprisonment, and ass-to-ass, then you remember that Requiem for a Dream, apart from being an arbitrarily grueling cinematic experience, is a pretty effective argument against drug use.  In the decade since his sophomore feature, director Darren Aronofsky has gone on to become a pretty big deal, and he's once again returned to world of drug addition with a series of four anti-meth PSAs.  As you'd expect, given the horrific subject material and uncompromising director, all four are built to be as unsettling as possible while still airing on network television, providing a series of visceral, appropriately dramatic sampling of meth's effects.

After combining body horror, turgid hallucinagenic thrills, and ballet to Oscar-nominated effect with last year's Black Swan, the question of Darren Aronofsky's next feature directorial project has been an interesting one.  For a spell there it seemed he would actually direct his The Fountain star Hugh Jackman in the stand-alone X-Men story The Wolverine, but he exited that project in March and was subsequently replaced by James Mangold.  Rather than helming the exploits of an adamantium-sporting mutant, it looks like the auteur will be directing his passion project of Biblical proportions, as Paramount Pictures have partnered with new Regency to co-finance his long-in-the-works Noah.

Since Darren Aronofsky abruptly departed the X-Men spin-off/sequel The Wolverine back in March, his next project has been a big question mark.  He's been trying to find financing for an expensive interpretation of the Old Testament story of Noah and the Flood, but he's not sitting still while waiting for that would-be film to come together.  Instead, THR's Heat Vision reports that he'll direct the pilot episode of Hobgoblin, the HBO series from literary power-couple Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.