John Cusack up for Dictablanda

Variety reportedly said John Cusack’s starring in a new feature called Dictablanda (Soft Dictator), a screwball slapstick comedy of manners  including an international conspiracy and intrigue.

Cusack co-wrote the script with entertainment attorney Kevin Morris, as well as actor Paul Hipp (”The Funeral,” “Face/Off”), who will also play in the film, and plus Alejandro Agresti. The latter, Agresti, the Argentine director of Valentin and The Lake House, is helming the lens. Production is already ongoing in Argentina, with sponsorship from local Pampa Films, and will continue through April.

The working title of the movie is “People don’t die, they get killed.”

John Cusack has just preoccupied playing Edgar Allan Poe in a period thriller called The Raven, inspired by the life and mysterious death of a magnificent American poet.

Cusack has been blessed enough to enjoy more than one period of career soaring. He had the top career picks in the early ’80s and a great run from the mid ’90s to 2000. The last decade hasn’t produced a “High Fidelity,”  but it had some solid appearances. His sensitive performances (Grace is Gone, The Ice Harvest) go unnoticeable, his paycheck roles get deeply disappointing (2012, Hot Tub Time Machine) and his two previous films, Shanghai and The Factory haven’t been released in theaters at all, despite both shooting back in 2008.

Hopefully roles in “Raven” and “Dictablanda” will mean we get to see his performances again better! Still, Cusack commonly has good choice in self-generated contents, and according to title, “Dictablanda” could be highly relevant. Hopefully it will end up better than War, Inc., a complete confusion of a spiritual sequel that landed a few years back.

More details will come out in the near future, but we wouldn’t expect to see this on big-screens before 2012.

What do you think?