Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn are in a deep bromantic love. They’ve already made it shown in everything from “The Bicep Clutch” to the locked lips, but on the filmmaking side it is just as passionate. They’ve teamed up for the excellent Drive, one of my favorite films of the year. It had its premiere last night at Los Angeles Film Festival, where we rounded up the strong impressions. Then there is the Logan’s Run remake, which Refn has promised to make a true update, looking further into the future from our current present day.
Before he gets to that sci-fi blockbuster, Refn’s next film will be the neo-western Only God Forgives with Kristin Scott-Thomas and Luke Evans. We uncovered a possible hint that Shia LaBeouf may be involved in the film that follows a British gangster and a retired Thai cop, shooting this summer in the latter country. But looking down the road, the director has previously expressed his intention to make a “dark” romantic comedy, and you’ll never guess who the star is.
24 Frames reports that Refn and his Drive and Run buddy Gosling will team up yet again with this romantic comedy. Refn told the site at their Los Angeles Film Festival premiere that “we’re doing a comedy, and Albert Brooks promised he’d write the screenplay.” He quickly corrected the comment regarding his gangster Drive star and said “Well, that’s not exactly true. But print it and we’ll make it true.” Just when you thought they were completely kidding, Gosling confirmed their intention saying “we’re definitely going to do a comedy, and we’re trying desperately to get [Brooks] to write it.”
Refn didn’t expand much further, just sharing that the romantic comedy will be “set in New York, which seems like a great place to start.” He previously talked to our own Jack Giroux at Film School Rejects about romantic comedies and said “the darkest film ever made and the film to me that’s the darkest picture in the human humanity’s soul is Pretty Woman.” When asked to follow up he stated “because if you were to pull the champagne out of that movie it is so deranged. They were able to champagne it up and sell it to millions, and millions of people as a fairy tale. It’s one of my favorite con stories of Hollywood.”
Forget Logan’s Run. I’ll take Refn’s Pretty Woman remake any day of the week. Considering Refn was able to pull out one of Gosling’s best performances, with a nearly silent role in Drive, I can’t wait to see what other possibilities the duo have in store. With Gosling being a romantic icon in The Notebook for pretty much every woman on the face of the planet, I dearly look forward to what kind of twist Refn has in store for the genre. The idea of Albert Brooks writing the script is just icing on the cake.
Drive hits theaters September 16th, 2011 via FilmDistrict, but Gosling will next be seen exercising his romantic comedy expertise in the highly-buzzed Crazy, Stupid, Love. this July.
What do you think about another reunion with Gosling and Refn? What about Refn doing a romantic comedy?