At long last, Edgar Wright has begun shooting a new film. It’s Baby Driver, a music-centered, heist-driven actioner that sounds like a perfect use of the writer-director’s significant talents. Per earlier reports and a recent Deadline story, we know it follows Baby (Ansel Elgort), a getaway driver (and now the title makes sense) whose outstanding skills can be attributed to his personal music choices in a tight squeeze. But then a crime boss, Doc (Kevin Spacey), hires him for a job that “threatens his life, love and freedom.”
Jon Bernthal (Sicario, The Wolf of Wall Street) has joined the cast as production gets underway — as we can surmise from Wright’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. Deadline also provide an update on the casting: Lily James co-stars as “Deborah, Baby’s innocent love interest”; Jon Hamm appears in the role of “Buddy the handsome party animal”; Jamie Foxx plays “Bats, the impulsive gun-slinging cohort”; and Eiza Gonzalez will be “Darling, Buddy’s lawless and scandalous girlfriend and partner in crime.”
With Working Title and Big Talk Productions behind the project, Baby Driver will open on March 17, 2017. See some of Wright’s posts below:
Turnover. Speed. And… pic.twitter.com/jB3A4cszXw
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) February 18, 2016
#babydriver A photo posted by Edgar Wright (@edgar_wright) on
#babydriver A photo posted by Edgar Wright (@edgar_wright) on
#babydriver Please choose. A photo posted by Edgar Wright (@edgar_wright) on
Some other news, also from Deadline, informs us Michael B. Jordan has attached himself to another revival – The Thomas Crown Affair, which puts him in a leading-man category beside Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan. No word on what director follows Norman Jewison and John McTiernan, or what leading lady (if any) comes after Faye Dunaway and Rene Russo, but the first bit of news is intriguing, even if only when one wonders why this is the next property MGM drags out for the remake treatment.
Finally, Variety have word that Hamilton composer and star Lin-Manuel Miranda will follow his smash Broadway show with a big-screen sequel — one also of the musical persuasion. Disney are planning a Mary Poppins sequel in which a) Emily Blunt takes over the title role and b) the action is updated to “Depression-era London,” i.e. some 20 years after the first film. Miranda will show off his pipes as Jack, a lamplighter who in the style of Dick Van Dyke’s Bert — what was once old is semi-new again — while also contributing to the picture’s musical accompaniment. Given the extent to which people love Hamilton — sell-your-children-to0get-a-ticket-level, I mean — this is a fine selling point.
In fact, the entire pedigree is far greater than we’d ever expect of such a project. Now, as for Rob Marshall sitting in the director’s chair? We’ll have to wait and see on that front.