Hell Or High Water and Outlaw King director David Mackenzie is to make another film with Aaron Taylor-Johnson – the heist thriller, Fuze.
David Mackenzie has already made one spectacular heist movie with Hell Or High Water, so it’s pleasing to hear he’s about to embark on another one. Called Fuze, it’ll star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, with whom Mackenzie previously collaborated on the 2018 historical piece, Outlaw King.
The film’s heist takes place as an area of London is evacuated following the discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb; based on an idea by Mackenzie, it’s the work of British screenwriter and novelist Ben Hopkins, whose most recent credit was the 2023 psychological thriller Inside, which starred Willem Dafoe as an art thief.
Fuze will also see Mackenzie re-team with Giles Nuttgens, the cinematographer who made West Texas look so bleakly captivating in Hell Or High Water. (Incidentally, John Woo loved Nuttgens’ work on that film so much that he tried, unsuccessfully, to acquire his services for the festive action banquet, Silent Night.)
Read more: Hell Or High Water | Why it’s still one of the great thrillers of the past decade
The British indie studio Anton is financing Fuze, and the plan is to sell world rights to the package at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin, where Celine Song’s upcoming film will also be up for grabs.
“Tension is one of the purest emotions that cinema can create,” Mackenzie said in a press release. “I had the idea of combining all the high stakes of an unexploded bomb with that of a bank robbery – clashing these two genres to create as much pressure as possible – in a context that feels as real as possible. Ben Hopkins took those ingredients and cooked up the compelling script that we are now taking into production.”
If Fuze turns out half as good as Hell Or High Water, then we should have a corking film in store. Did we mention how much we liked Hell Or High Water?
