It seems as though the legendary – and, yes, I do mean legendary – Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has a new film in the pipeline. It’s a “metaphysical spaghetti western of gangsters”, it’s called King Shot, it’s produced by David Lynch and, true to form, it already sounds buggier-than-batshit.

Jodo says:

“I think that gangsters are the most metaphysical characters. Take a look at the presidents, they are all gangsters.”

Then later he says:

“The front elevation of the casino is an Egyptian church. For the Egyptians, the beetle was the symbol of the creator who transports the world in his ball of excrement. That is why I say that this is a film of the metaphysics of the gangsters.”

Jodorowsky isn’t the most prolific of directors: when it comes to output he makes Stanley Kubrick look like Clint Eastwood. After all, he’s only directed seven films during his fifty – yes, fifty – year filmmaking career, and his last pic was back in 1990. For Jodorowsky fanatics like me, then, King Shot is something of a Big Deal.

Still, I’ve heard so many rumours over the years about Jodorowsky film projects that never actually materialised (coughcough ‘Sons of El Topo’ coughcough) that I’m reluctant to get too excited. If its alright with you, I’ll file King Shot in my Beleieve-it-when-I-see-it file until I actually, um, see it.

I used to say the same thing about Watchmen, of course.

2019 Update: it was Jodorowsky’s 90th birthday last week, so I thought I’d update this post because I couldn’t afford a decent present. Unsurprisingly, King Shot was never made (it’s got a parking spot next to Sons of El Topo in the Development Hell Multi-Storey). What is surprising is that Jodorowsky has since made not one, but two feature films (2011s The Dance of Reality and 2015s Endless Poetry, both crowdfunded and both critically-acclaimed).  There’s also a crowdfunded documentary film in the pipeline called Psychomagic: An Art that Heals, while the long stalled-aforementioned Sons of El Topo has been turned into a graphic novel series with art by José Ladrönn).

During this period, his King Shot production partner David Lynch made Twin Peaks: the Return, a bold and uncompromising piece of experimental art in its own right.