Elaine May Returning to Direct Dakota Johnson in Crackpot

November 2, 2019

It’s been over 30 years since Oscar-nominee Elaine May (The Birdcage) sat in the director’s chair for a big screen project with the infamous box office bomb Ishtar, and now she is returning for a film called Crackpot in which Fifty Shades‘ Dakota Johnson is set to star, according to Deadline.

Johnson revealed the existence of the project to a Deadline reporter at the Governors Awards cocktail party early this week, although no further details were given on the plot, characters or just who was writing the script for the film.

After getting her start with acting for a few years, May made her screenwriting and directorial debut with the black comedy A New Leaf, in which she wrote, directed and starred alongside Walter Matthau. Although a commercial failure, it received large critical fanfare, currently holding a 100% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. She went on to direct the dark romantic comedy The Heartbreak Kid, the gangster film Mikey and Nicky, and then the Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman debacle Ishtar. She also wrote the LGBTQ comedy The Birdcage and the Oscar-nominated political dramedy Primary Colors.

Johnson rose to popularity with her lead role in the commercially successful film adaptations of the erotic Fifty Shades novel series, while also receiving praise for her supporting turns in Luca Guadagnino’s 2015 drama A Bigger Splash, biographical crime drama Black Mass and her reunion with Guadagnino in 2018’s Suspiria remake. She has also recently been seen in the well-received neo-noir thriller Bad Times at the El Royale and the acclaimed indie adventure dramedy The Peanut Butter Falcon alongside Shia LaBeouf (Honey Boy).