Ben Wheatley may be the most exciting and prolific filmmaker coming out of the U.K. right now. And the director is moving at an incredibly quick clip. At the beginning of 2011 he unveiled his shocking and disturbing hitman/horror film, “Kill List,” and by the spring of the following year he had debuted his black comedy thriller follow-up “Sightseers” at Cannes. “Sightseers” hasn’t even been released in the U.S. yet — it will hit Sundance later this month — but he’s already got another film in the can called “A Field In England” (which he’s described as a psychedelic period piece set during the English Civil War). And yes, it’s coming soon too. During a recent Empire podcast, Wheatley said it would be finished in post-production by the end of this past December.
And not one to stop for a moment, he’s got two more projects in the queue. One will be his American film “Freakshift,” a John Carpenter-esque adventure/sci-fi creature feature with an estimated budget of $15 million, and “I Macrobane,” a black comedy/time-travel head-twister starring Nick Frost and regular collaborator Michael Smiley (“Down Terrace,” “Kill List”).
Well, there’s one more to add to his growing laundry list. Details are scant, but while flipping through the recent December issue of Empire, we found evidence of yet another film, this one called “Two For Hell.” All Empire says is that while he finishes “A Field In England,” he and writing partner Amy Jump will be penning their 2013/2014 films, one of which includes “the crime flick ‘Two For Hell.’ “
When he and Jump (who has co-written three of his films now) have time to sleep is unclear. But what is evident is that Wheatley is working at a rate that would make Woody Allen blush (and tackling more genres than any filmmaker we can think of at present). And we, for one, can’t wait to see the results.