News: Paul Verhoeven

He may have had a six year break before directing this week’s Second World War flick Black Book, but cult director Verhoeven looks to have got the taste for film again, with two more prjects lined up. The first, The Winter Queen, is a bit of a departure for the man best known for the likes of RoboCop and Total Recall – it’s to be a period detective story, set in 19th century Russia and England. The other will also not seem quite like the sort of thing for which Verhoeven is best known, being based on the novel Knielen op een bed violen (“Kneeling on a bed of violets”) by Dutch literary writer Jan Siebelink – a coming-of-age tale of religion and small-scale, small-town resentment and revenge.