When I was a young, wide-eyed boy, Guy Ritchie films seemed like something special. It wasn’t that they were good – they’re okay – or even that I enjoyed them all that much – I do, but again, they’re okay – it was that they felt tangible, achievable, even. As a kid, I wanted to make films, but stuck in the dead-end of England with no real connections or cash, left me at a loss as to how to do it. And then Lock, Stock and Snatch hit, and suddenly… it all made sense.
Flash forward several years and things have changed. I no longer consider Ritchie the height of what I can achieve, and Ritchie himself has moved on from East End gangsters to big-budget blockbusters like Sherlock Holmes and Man From U.N.C.L.E. His last movie, The Gentlemen, saw him return to his gangster roots, but before that he’d brought Disney’s Aladdin to life in a live-action remake of the classic cartoon.
As Ritchie has moved up through the ranks of Hollywood, so too has one of the stars of his two early movies, Jason Statham, and I’ll admit I have been sort of waiting for an eventual reteam of these two. This week it appears I got my wish, as we learned the pair are not only scheduled to reunite on a film currently in post-production called Cash Truck but are also planning to join forces again for a spy thriller.
I might be alone in this, but I quite enjoyed Ritchie’s Man From U.N.C.L.E., so the prospect of him returning to the spy sub-genre is rather tantalizing for me. That he’s doing it with Jason Statham, king of the over-the-top action sequence only sweetens the deal. The film will be called Five Eyes, and will follow an MI6 agent played by Statham who is “recruited by global intelligence alliance ‘Five Eyes’ to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapon that threatens to disrupt the world order.” I’m looking forward to this, and not least because it’s not about superheroes.
Speaking of superheroes getting in the way of everything, do you guys remember a little while back when we learned of Zack Snyder’s new movie, a post-apocalyptic “zombie heist film” called Army of the Dead, that took place in Las Vegas? Well, while the news around Snyder may have been predominantly overtaken by his upcoming cut of Justice League, Snyder himself is still working on the movie, which was apparently originally developed to be a sequel to his 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.
The film will drop via Netflix, although when that will be remains a mystery at this point. Still, the streaming service seems to be fairly confident in the film, since this week they greenlit not only a prequel movie but also a spin-off animated series.
The prequel will reportedly center around German actor Matthias Schweighofer’s character, and Schweighofer will both star in and direct the film. The spin-off animated series will reportedly focus on the character played by Dave Bautista in the film and is going to be written by screenwriter Shay Hatten who, as well as writing Army of the Dead, was also behind Jock Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
And while we’re on the subject of horror (the film has zombies in it, so it’s basically a horror), while many of us are still waiting on the release of A Quiet Place Part 2, the original film’s screenwriters, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, are busy in pre-production on a brand new horror film that they have written and will direct.
I’m quite curious about this one, not only because I thought A Quiet Place was a really interesting concept for a film, but because the duo’s other movie, which they also directed, the 2019 horror Haunt, is really twisted and has some genuinely scary moments.
The film is called 65 and will be produced by Sam Raimi, so it could be something interesting. Perhaps most curiously, the filmmakers have managed to bag actor Adam Driver for a lead role, who is coming to the project hot off of his busy 2019, which saw him star in a Star Wars movie and earn an Oscar nomination for his role in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story.
While Driver’s presence will certainly elevate the film’s status, given the actor is currently busy shooting Ridley Scott’s upcoming historical drama The Last Duel – which just returned after a COVID-19 related hiatus – and is also in talks to appear in Scott’s next movie – a true-crime thriller called Gucci which stars Lady Gaga – it could be a little while before we see this one.
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