I know it seems like we’ve had a lot of posts lately about Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, but that’s what happens when a guy who has been making interesting movies for several years starts to nose around studio films. He got attached to a lot of projects in short order, and now some of those naturally have to fall away.
Refn is next making Drive, with Ryan Gosling, and that necessitates skipping out on a couple other films. He’ll no longer direct Keanu Reeves in Jekyll, nor will he be able to make The Dying of the Light, the Paul Schrader script that is to star Harrison Ford. Both of those films had sounded interesting, particularly the Schrader script, and it’s sad to see Refn have to drop them. Empire reports that timing was the issue for Jekyll and that “things fell apart” for The Dying of the Light.
Currently, the plan seems to be for Refn to make Drive and then move on to his wild-sounding Western Only God Forgives, then a film set in Miami called I Walk with the Dead. Hopefully Only God Forgives, at least, will come to pass.
The last time we heard about the movie Drive, Neil Marshall was talking about it as one of his next projects. Hugh Jackman was to star in the film about a guy who is a stuntman by day and robbery getaway driver by night. But it’s been quite a while since the film was mentioned anywhere, and it seems to have new names attached. Now Nicolas Winding Refn apparently wants to make it, with Ryan Gosling starring. Please allow me to say: oh, hell yes. Read More »
His recent, loud homage to Mad Max and killer viruses, Doomsday, was mostly ignored and deflated quickly at the box office, but genre director Neil Marshall is still going strong. He’s now attached to his second project of the month, an L.A.-set action mystery vehicle for Hugh Jackman at Universal entitled Drive that looks to be his next film. An adaptation of author James Sallis’s neo-noir of the same name, Jackman will star as a Hollywood stunt driver who enjoys a double-life as a getaway man for robberies. In the book, one of the heists backfires and Jackman’s character earns a bounty on his life.
“This is something I haven’t done before, and I’ve wanted to bring a British sensibility to an L.A. shoot and a scorched classic film noir concept,” Marshall told Variety. “Hoss is a fantastic writer, and he’s written three amazing car chases in the film. He’s turned them into dramatic scenes as opposed to the usual crash, bang, wallop. I would like to be shooting it this summer.”
Last week it was announced that Marshall will also direct Sacrilege, a Western horror flick that he ambitiously described as “Unforgiven by way of H.P. Lovecraft,” with a dash of The Thing. Drive was adapted by Hossein Amini, who wrote The Golden Compass sequel The Subtle Knife as well as the long-delayed Elmore Leonard crime adaptation Killshot (um, IMDB says it’s due April ‘08).
I’m curious what Marshall means by bringing a “British sensibility” to L.A. for Drive. His currently has one of the more active mid-level fanboy-centric careers in the industry right now, and it will be interesting to see if he continues to build on the promise seen with The Descent or if he goes the way of a Simon West.
Discuss: Drive or Sacrilege, which sounds cooler? If you skipped it, why did you miss Doomsday? What didn’t grab you about it? If you saw it, worth the ticket?
