Although it was reported that Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn‘s next project may be The Dying of the Light with Harrison Ford, it looks like he has found something else. Empire (via The Playlist) spoke with the director today and he said:
Hopefully [my] next is a movie with Ryan Gosling at a studio in America. It’s called ‘Drive,’ and it’s about a stuntman by day, a getaway driver by night.
If this project sounds familiar it is because The Descent director Neil Marshall was signed on to direct Hugh Jackman almost two years ago, but the production never got started. Now that it’s back on track with Nicolas Winding Refn, I couldn’t be more excited. The James Sallis novel of the same name follows “a stuntman who’s already-exciting existence is jolted when he discovers that a contract has been put out on his life.”
Check out the full novel synopsis below via Amazon:
I drive. That’s what I do. All I do.” So declares the enigmatic Driver in this masterfully convoluted neo-noir, which ranges from the dive bars and flyblown motels of Los Angeles to seedy strip malls dotting the Arizona desert. A stunt driver for movies, Driver finds more excitement as a wheelman during robberies, but when a heist goes sour, a contract is put on his head and his survival skills burn up the pavement. Author of the popular six-novel series set in New Orleans featuring detective Lew Griffin (The Long-Legged Fly, etc.) and such stand-alone crime novels as Cypress Grove, Sallis won’t disappoint fans who enjoy his usual quirky literary stylings. Reading a crime paperback, Driver covers “a few more lines till he fetched up on the word desuetude. What the hell kind of word was that?” Lines such as “Time went by, which is what time does, what it is” provide the perfect existential touch. In this short novel, expanded from his story in Dennis McMillan’s monumental anthology Measures of Poison, Sallis gives us his most tightly written mystery to date, worthy of comparison to the compact, exciting oeuvre of French noir giant.
Winding Refn was also attached to the Keanu Reeves-starring Jekyll, a Gore Verbinksi-produced heist film and the neo-Western Only God Forgives, set in Bangkok. The word that he will be directing Drive comes straight from his mouth, so expect it to be his next project. I loved Bronson and need to see Valhalla Rising again to fully appreciate it, but I look forward to anything Refn does.
Do you like Nicolas Winding Refn? Would you like to see him direct Drive?
