Coming off his hit debut Zombieland, it was unfortunate to see director Ruben Fleischer follow it up with something as mediocre and small-in-scope as 30 Minutes or Less. But he is aiming much, much bigger for his next project. Taking on 1940s Los Angeles, Gangster Squad is currently still shooting, but we have the first official image today from EW.
The Will Beall-scripted period piece features a fantastic ensemble that includes Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Michael Peña, Giovanni Ribisi and Nick Nolte. The first look above features Penn as infamous gangster Mickey Cohen and Brolin as one of the cops trying to bring him down, along with Gosling. EW also includes an interview, which I highly recommend checking it out. I’ve include two snippets below.
On the above first look:
Ultimately it’s the story between these two guys. It’s Josh and Sean who face off at the end after a big gun battle between the Gangster Squad and Cohen and his men. O’Mara catches up to Cohen and Sean mockingly says, “Okay, copper, take me in.” It ends in a fistfight between Cohen and O’Mara, and it was a pretty epic sequence to film between Josh and Sean.
On location:
These places don’t exist anymore. We had to take blocks of streets and build period storefronts and recreate clubs that have been closed for years. The past two nights, we had a full tommy-gun battle inside the Chinese Theater with gangsters lighting off 50 rounds a minute. And then tonight and the next night, it’s going to bleed out onto Hollywood Boulevard as our Gangster Squad retreats. We’re going to have a full battle on one of the most famous streets in L.A. And staging a scene at the Griffith Park Observatory is just iconic because you instantly think of Rebel Without a Cause and all the great movies that have filmed there. On Monday, we were on the steps of City Hall with Nick Nolte. It’s like going in a time machine when you go to the set.
Gangster Squad will hit theaters October 19th, 2012.
What do you think of the first look?