News about Paul Verhoeven's "AZAZEL"

For everyone wondering what Paul Verhoeven is up to after "Zwartboek": the Dutch newspaper "Algemeen Dagblad" published news last thursday about his next movie "Azazel", based on the Russian novel "The Winter Queen" by Boris Akoenin.

Verhoeven's regular writer Gerard Soeteman is scripting and the movie is scheduled to be shot in July. Locations include St. Petersburg, England and the Babelsberg studios near Berlin.
The cast will be announced soon, but Milla Jovovich is already known to be on board.

Verhoeven's daughter (who studied Russian) introduced him to Akoenin's story. He says in the article: "It's a very rich book, it's about murder, suicide, terrorism and conspiracies".
Gerard Soeteman adds: "The novel has many allusions to Russian literature, but you won't see those in our version, we managed to adapt it the way we wanted to".

The story concerns the civil servant Erast Fandorin who acts as a detective in 19th century Russia.

After "Azazel" Verhoeven wants to adapt the Dutch novel "Knielen op een bed violen" from novelist Jan Siebelink, and Soeteman just finished the script for it. After that both of them plan to attempt making a movie about the disaster which befel the Dutch East-Indian Company ship "Batavia" in 1629.

The original story in Dutch:

"The Winter Queen" is only one in a series of Fandorin books concerning this James Bond-like character. In Russia these rival Harry Potter and Tolkien in popularity, and several stories were recently adapted as blockbusters (notably "The Turkish Gambit" and "The Councillar of State" in 2005, both movies winning several awards and commercial succes in their home country).