Well, the offer that was floated a month ago has been signed and sealed and Derek Cianfrance‘s “The Place Beyond The Pines,” his followup to the acclaimed “Blue Valentine,” is now moving full steam ahead.
Variety reports that Bradley Cooper is confirmed for the film that has been in the works for a while now. Back in December, the film was described as a Jack London-inspired tale about “fathers and guns, and [featured] motorcycles and guns in it.” We chatted with Cianfrance a couple of months later and he shared with us that “Ryan’s going to play Luke, a motorcycle stunt rider who finds out he has a baby and he tries to become a father.” But here’s a more complete synopsis.
Gosling’s character is going to turn to robbing banks to support his son, but he crosses paths with a police officer (Cooper) and a simmering generational feud begins. “It’s kind of an epic movie. It takes place over a couple of generations and it’s kind of a crime story, kind of a mystery. I’ve had people tell me they feel like it’s ‘The Deer Hunter’ meets ‘The Godfather,’” Cianfrance told us, and if that doesn’t get you excited, we don’t know what will.
Cianfrance co-wrote the script with Ben Coccio and it will begin shooting on July 25th in Schenectady, N.Y. Needless to say, we couldn’t be more excited that Cianfrance isn’t wasting any time getting to his next film, though after spending a decade developing “Blue Valentine,” we figure his paying-dues time is now over. Gosling will head to “Gangster Squad” after this film and presumably “Logan’s Run” in late 2011 or early 2012. As you might recall, Nicolas Winding Refn is gearing up “Only God Forgives” to lens during the summer as well, but he tends to work remarkably fast so we don’t expect the sci-fi reboot to sit idle for too long. As for Cooper, by his own recent comments, he’s seems pretty much lined up for “The Crow” and “Paradise Lost,” but the former is facing legal problems and the latter needs a greenlight so they will wait for now. As far as followups go to the biggest R-rated comedy of all time, Cooper has made a great choice.
Also, random trivia time: did you know Bradley Cooper speaks fluent French? He does. Check out this interview he did in France for “The Hangover Part II” that Vulture dug up: