Busy Danish Filmmaker Keeps Committing To New Projects
We change underpants each day, meanwhile Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (“Bronson“) adds yet another project to his long-growing slate.
He already has the Thai-set Western “Only God Forgives” written and gestating, an Untitled Heist Project that Gore Verbinski is producing, that might star Mads Mikkelsen and this fall he shoots the neo-noir heist car picture “Drive,” starring Ryan Gosling (which he hopes will be a good calling card to direct “Wonder Woman“).
He had Channing Tatum and Harrison Ford starring in the Paul Schrader-penned project, “The Dying Of The Light,” but it fell apart “over a weekend” earlier this year, the director told us recently.
“It was all set to go and it also had Channing Tatum in it, who is another very good young actor,” he said. “I’m so annoyed it didn’t work. I liked Harrison Ford a lot and I liked being around him. And it could have been a great film, but…”
And the director also had to bail on “Jekyll” with Keanu Reeves because of a scheduling issue. Well, two down, three on the go, why not just add one more, right? Refn has one more project on the way; a thriller he penned called, “I Walk With The Dead.” The picture should prove to be hot in more ways than one.
“I’ve always wanted to make a movie with lots of sex,” he told us, being somewhat coy on too many details. “So I wrote this story called, ‘I Walk With The Dead’ and it takes place in Miami and its just going to have a lot of sex in it. I have two films that are getting made with French investors and one is ‘Only God Forbids’ and one is ‘I Walk With The Dead.'”
When would that one actually shoot? Who knows, but Refn did purposely delay “Only God Forbids” because “Drive” became available and Gosling was game (not to mention he wants to make that Amazonian super hero film), but he also told us the money for that one is just sitting there waiting for him, so presumably he can make those two on his own schedule when Hollywood is not beckoning.
Other genres he might like to tackle? He tells us he’d love to tackle both a romantic comedy and a musical. And you wonder why we love the guy. Refn’s made seven movies in thirteen years, and is moving at an even quicker pace these days, it seems. His latest, “Valhalla Rising” a meditative and haunting viking action-drama starring the aforementioned Mikkelsen hits theaters this Friday, July 16 (Box-office mojo says the 23rd, they are wrong). Even more from this interview, conducted by our EIC, soon.