Sweden’s Snabba Cash helmer, Daniel Espinosa seems to have his hands full lately. According to THR, Espsinosa has his eye on several projects, including some involving the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Bryan Singer and Benicio Del Toro. Universal, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and others have all been involved in a bidding war over said projects. Among these is Safe House, a David Guggenheim scripted, Scott Stuber produced thriller for Universal.
Safe House‘s premise promises enough: intrigue, espionage and action. “The story centers on a newbie intelligence agent at a CIA-run South American safe house who must help a newly transferred criminal stay alive when the house is attacked” (THR). If that wasn’t enough for the Swede, he’s also has been in talks with Leonardo DiCaprio t0 direct Prisoners, yet another thriller that revolves around “a small-town father who captures and tortures the man responsible for his daughter’s kidnapping after the police fail him.”
In addition to helping DiCaprio get his Edge of Darkness on, Espinosa has also been in talks to take the director’s chair for Fox’s X-Men: First Class with Bryan Singer returning to the franchise as a producer. This news comes right on the heels of recent misconceptions that Matthew Vaughn of Kick-Ass was in contention for the job.
Even further still (the CIA, vengeful fathers and teenage mutants aside), Espinosa has been rumored to be circling two other projects. One is an” untitled crime thriller about the true story of Ingrid Casares and Chris Paciello, who rose through the Miami nightclub scene but fell hard amid charges of bank robbery and murder.” The other is Double Feature’s “Making Jack Falcone, the true story of Joaquin Garcia, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Gambino crime family.” The latter involves Benicio Del Toro, in addition to producers Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher. With so many fingers in Espinosa’s proverbial pie, it seems that when it rains it pours for the Swedish filmmaker, who is clearly the talk of tinsel town.
So how about it? Should Espinosa keep with the grittiness he put on screen with Snabba Cash, and go with the likes of Prisoners or Making Jack Falcone? Should he take something more outside his comfort zone with X-Men: First Class (maybe perhaps bringing some of his grittiness to that as well)?