He’s been talking about it since spring of 2009, but it finally looks like Rian Johnson’s ambitious sci-fi time-traveling thriller “Looper” is going to get made with Production Weekly tweeting that the project will begin filming in January.
The film will star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in a story that Johnson has previously described as “set in a near future where time travel doesn’t exist but will be invented in a few decades. [The story] involves a group of killers (called Loopers) who work for a crime syndicate in the future. Their bosses send their targets hogtied and blindfolded back in time to the Loopers, and their job is simply shoot them in the head and dispose of the body. So the target vanishes from the future and the Loopers dispose of a corpse that doesn’t technically exist, a very clean system. Complications set in from there.”
It certainly sounds pretty compelling, and certainly the kind of smart sci-fi we tend to love. Willis is particularly excited about the film, comparing it favorably to “12 Monkeys” and describing the script as “unbelievable” and “really dark.” Willis went on to reveal that the film has a deep emotional core saying, “It’s not about time travel as much as it is about mistakes you have made and things you don’t want to do and your little childhood self coming near your adult life going ‘No, you’re not going to do that. I’ve got to fucking kill me.'”
Needless to say, this just jumped right up on our list of the most anticipated films for next year. Further casting news and whatnot should be along the way as the the shooting date draws closer.