According to Variety, it looks like Mark Romanek, one of the genuinely great music video artists who rose in the ranks alongside fellow wunderkinds Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, is acquiring quite a cast for his second feature, the exciting-sounding “Never Let Me Go.”
Today it was announced that Keira Knightley will star in the futuristic thriller written by “28 Days Later”’s Alex Garland, who last wrote the severely underrated metaphysical space freak-out movie “Sunshine.” (Maybe, since “Sunshine’s director Danny Boyle is all the rage after his Oscar win, the film will find a new audience? No. Probably not.)
The frequently corseted Knightley will star alongside the very excellent Andrew Garfield, from “Lions for Lambs” and “Boy A.” (Garfield also has a role in the forthcoming Terry Gilliam disappointment “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”) The film will also co-star Carey Mulligan, who co-starred with Knightley in “Pride & Prejudice” and looks like she’ll be a big star after this year, with turns in the buzz-worthy “An Education” and Michael Mann’s big time gangster epic “Public Enemies” (alongside Christian “Fucking” Bale and Johnny Depp).
Variety describes the plot for “Never Let Me Go” as “revolves around a trio who grew up in a boarding school with no contact or knowledge of the outside world until they discover they are clones grown for the sole purpose of organ donation.”
This sounds pretty cool, sort of a mixture of the “An Orison of Sonmi~451” section of David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas” and Michael Bay’s “Logan’s Run”-y action movie “The Island.” But, since Garland and Romanek are involved, I’m sure it’ll be dark-as-fuck and bloody-as-hell (I’ll almost guarantee you gory surgical scenes GALORE).
The announcement also lessens the sting of Romanek’s unceremonious walk-out/removal from this year’s big budget “Wolf Man” remake. With two weeks until the production start date, Romanek walked away – from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self, from a cast that included Benicio del Toro (as the fanged menace), Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Emily Blunt, and from a sure-fire audience crowd pleaser that would have raised his profile considerably in Hollywood. (Other notable credits include Rick Baker doing the make-up and Danny Elfman doing the undoubtedly ominous score.) Joe Johnston, who designed “The Iron Giant” and directed “The Rocketeer,” took over. It opens the week after Halloween. Oh man, Romanek’s movie would have been so much better.
Anyway. We’re glad something, ANYTHING, is coming from Romanek. After his promisingly creepy, but flawed debut “One Hour Photo,” for a while it looked like we’d only get the odd music video or iPod commercial from the talented director. Now, we have something concrete. Something that sounds pretty intriguing. – Drew Taylor