Harmony Korine Might Direct 'Tampa' After His Cheech & Chong-Esque Comedy

Harmony Korine's The Trap is on pause. Al Pacino, Benicio Del Toro, Idris Elba, Robert Pattinson, and James Franco were set to star in the film, which is about an insane-sounding feud between a musician (Elba) and his old, ex-convict buddy (Del Toro). The project was financed and ready to go, but after Korine had some personal problems with an actor who was initially attached to the project, a delay occurred. Until The Trap goes before cameras, Korine has been considering other films, including an adaptation of Alissa Nutting's novel Tampa.

Below, learn more about Korine's Tampa adaptation.

According to The Playlist, next up for the filmmaker is a comedy he described as a cross between a Cheech & Chong movie and the 1973 film Scarecrow, but during a Q&A at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, he said he's also writing an adaptation of Tampa. Nutting's debut novel follows a middle-school teacher, Celeste Price, who seduces a 14-year-old student named Jack Patrick. The writer-director hinted he's discussed bringing the adaptation to HBO.

Here's the book's full synopsis:

In Alissa Nutting's novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student.

Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste's terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack's house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste's empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure.

Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with black humor and crackling sexualized prose, Alissa Nutting's Tampa is a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.

If this doesn't sound like the kind of film Harmony Korine would make, then what does? Even putting aside the Florida setting, this material seems well suited for the Spring Breakers and Gummo director. It's the kind of story that would probably polarize audiences — which Korine has done many times throughout his career. He may direct Tampa after his buddy comedy, but The Trap is still a possibility for the near future. The director has a tendency, in his words, to lose interest in a project if it takes too long. Earlier this year, however, he said he still wants to make The Trap.