I’m also excited for the new Charlie Kaufman movie, Frank or Francis. What’s it like working with Charlie, and can you tell us anything about your character?

We haven’t started formal rehearsals yet, but he’s an incredible guy. He’s had some ideas about what Francis is like and what he sounds like and what I should study. I can’t tell you much about the character though, sorry.

The screenplay satirizes Hollywood, which seems like a dangerous game to play for an actor. Were you tentative about getting involved?

No, I’m all for it! That’s what made me extra into it. It’s necessary and it’s profound. Our country is super celebrity-obsessed and the world, especially the United States, really needs a movie like this to examine our need to be famous. (Source)

She's made 11 trips to the US in the past two years, ''none of which I've paid for'', she adds with a girlish giggle. She's made three movies and worked with Shirley MacLaine, Nicole Kidman and Robert De Niro.

There's a pilot for HBO in the can and a role in Charlie Kaufman's new film. The highlight of her Hollywood adventure so far has been playing De Niro's wife in The Silver Linings Playbook, due out later this year. ''That took some beating,'' she says. ''In fact I don't think it will ever be beaten.'' (Source)

indieWIRE speculates that the film is probably Frank or Francis.

"[The script is] under lock and key. It is a musical," Black shared. "I will be singing. Everyone will be in fact. If you're in that movie you will be singing. There's no just regular talking it's all [singing]."

[...] "That might not be the case," he continued. "Don't quote me on that."

[...] "Erase that part. I gotta go back and read the script again. Maybe there is some regular talking mixed in. In fact, there is," he finished. (Source)

The Carnegie Medal winning book is set in a dystopian future with humans colonizing a distant earth-like planet. When an infection called the Noise suddenly makes all thought audible, privacy vanishes, chaos ensues, and a corrupt autocrat threatens to take control of the human settlements and wage war with the indigenous alien race. Only young Todd Hewitt holds the key to stopping planet wide-destruction. (Source)

WOW. Big news. Busy times ahead for Charlie, if all of these upcoming projects come to fruition. Frank or Francis, the untitled novel for Grand Central, maybe that "world leaders" film. (Or is the world leaders thing in fact a Jonze project, sans Charlie? I AM GETTING VERY CONFUSED.)

There's a write-up on io9 which explains where those names come from. The article's called "Everyone Around You is An Impostor: Inside the Mind's Most Bizarre Delusions."

The first of the delusions, in which a person becomes convinced impostors have replaced their friends and family, is known as the Capgras delusion, named for the French psychiatrist Joseph Capgras who along with Jean Reboul-Lachaux first described the condition in 1923.

[...]

Leopoldo Fregoli was one of the greatest entertainers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He perfected a style of performance known as quick-change, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds — he would switch costumes and characters during his stage shows so rapidly that it was suggested he actually required several other Fregolis for his act to be possible. And while that notion of hidden duplicates would fit right in with the delusions we've been discussing, that's not actually what won him his unlikely — and quite possibly unwanted — immortality in the annals of psychology. (Source)

More info at the link.

Some people don't just create new worlds and super-memorable characters — they give life to their own genres. There are some creators of fantastical stories whose work is so distinctive, you have a pretty good sense what's going to happen when you pick up their work — and you're excited, because it's going to be a hell of a ride.

And here's Charlie's bit:

Kaufman wrote a string of movies that combined surrealism, broken characters and bitter humor, including Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And then he started directing his own screenplays, with Synecdoche, New York and the forthcoming Frank or Francis. (And he's got a novel in the pipeline, about which nobody knows anything.) It's hard to pigeonhole Kaufman's work into a single genre (maybe Slipstream?) but everything he writes is instantly recognizable, from the depressed heroes to the strange plot devices to the habit of inserting a love story where you least expect it. (Source)

A few of the other folks who make the list: Joss Whedon, Kurt Vonnegut, Grant Morrison, Terry Gilliam.

Is the Charlie Kaufman film, Frank or Francis, your next project?

KLINE:  It could well be.  It depends.  It’s a huge cast, and getting everyone in the same place, at the same time, and the certain amount of money in place to make the film, is tough.  I’m just waiting for a start date.  The producer is actually the same producer for this film, and he’s very confident that it’s all going to come together shortly.

So, what will you do while you’re waiting?

KLINE:  I’m just going to go about my business of doing whatever.  I’m doing some Shakespeare this summer, briefly, and maybe another movie or something.  It depends.  I could get a call this afternoon saying we’re going to start in two weeks, on Frank or Francis.

Could you talk about your role in that movie?  There’s music in it, so will you be singing?

KLINE:  One of my characters sings.  I play three characters.  That sounds interesting, so I don’t want to disappoint you by giving you anymore details. (Source)

... Kaufman's debut book, it seems, will be more than meta enough for fans long accustomed to his unique movies: it is a novelization of the script for his 2002 film, Adaptation, which itself was based on Susan Orlean's book, The Orchid Thief. Clocking in at a whopping 2456 pages, the book details a midlist novelist's attempt to write the film tie-in for an Oscar-nominated movie.

"He's one of those writers who get paid to turn film scripts into novels," says Charlie, "but the film's release date is approaching, and he hasn't written a word of it because the script is kind of strange and unadaptable -- the script doesn't lend itself to a readable novel. So he kind of gets fed up and writes about his own struggle to write the novel, and in doing so, the novel becomes a huge, sprawling epic only tangentially linked to the actual film."

[...] why write a novel based on a film that was already based on a book? And why now? "I don't know," says Kaufman.

Two editions of Kaufman's novel will be available: the standard novel, and a fully illustrated, limited, deluxe pop-up version which will stand approximately three feet tall. Try putting that on your coffee table.

Grand Central Publishing estimates a release date during the first quarter of 2013. (Source)

The revelation was made by Elliott himself, who dropped the following while talking to A.V. Club contributor Will Harris for a soon-to-be-published interview—and unlike past assurances, Elliott sounds pretty confident:

“Get A Life is going to be coming out as a complete series on Shout Factory. I’m not entirely sure when—I think probably in the fall?—but, yes, it will be actually coming out…finally! At the end of April, we’re going to be doing the special features. Commentaries and that sort of stuff.”

As often lamented by fans of the surreal show—which boasted scripts from Bob Odenkirk and Charlie Kaufman, and had Elliott playing a dimwitted, insane, man-child paperboy who traveled through time, cared for vomiting aliens, and, with notable frequency, died—Get A Life has only seen release in various, out-of-print “best of” collections, with attempts to get the whole series out there repeatedly stymied by “suits,” in Elliott’s words. (Source)