The Oscar-bait historical drama Lincoln hits movie theaters on November 16, but the film's writer Tony Kushner and director Steven Spielberg aren't celebrating yet—instead they're getting back to work! The playwright-turned-screenwriter is currently working on a brand new screenplay for the Oscar-winning director, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“I haven’t told this to anyone, but I’m already working on a new script for [Spielberg],” Kushner said in an interview in the magazine's November 9 issue. “So we’ll be talking all the time again. I just started on it a couple of weeks ago.” Kushner also wrote the screenplay for Speilberg's 2005 film Munich. The movie was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
So has Kushner become Spielberg’s favorite screenwriter? “He has other go-to guys,” he said. “But I like working with him and I think he likes the difficulties that working with me presents.” Although Kushner is having success as a screenwriter, he admits he’s set in his playwriting ways. “I take a long time, and I can’t do it until I’m ready to do it, and I’m not an experienced screenwriter, and I’m too old at this point to learn how to start being one. I want to be a playwright. That’s what I am.”
Kushner is best known for his 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America. On Broadway, he wrote the book and lyrics for Caroline, or Change. His additional plays include Slavs!, A Bright Room Called Day, Decade, G. David Schine in Hell, his translation of The Illusion and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.