With CIllian Murphy and Daniel Craig in place as the film’s leads, Damien Chazelle’s prison film will shoot this autumn.
After some to-ing and fro-ing it’s finally confirmed – Damien Chazelle’s next project will be the untitled prison movie that he developed in the wake of Babylon's commercial struggles at the back end of 2022.
After publicly voicing concerns that the expensive film’s failure to make a profit during its theatrical run might have landed him in Hollywood purgatory, Chazelle went to work on developing something more modestly sized – a mid-budget drama set largely in a prison.
However, as this project seemed to be edging towards production something more expansive suddenly popped up on Chazelle’s slate of potential projects: An Evel Knievel biopic that would see Leonardo DiCaprio play the legendary stunt rider doing death-defying motorcycle stunts.
As quickly as it surfaced though, that project would hit the skids, with DiCaprio reportedly freezing the project to reunite once again with long-time collaborator, Martin Scorsese. Happily for Chazelle though, he had his prison movie pretty far along the developmental path (given that it was originally slated to shoot in October of 2024) and quickly returned to it.
Casting quickly followed for what is being described by World Of Reel as a ‘gritty, mid-budget prison drama with action elements’. Cillian Murphy and Daniel Craig are in place to play the film’s two leads, and whilst that might hint at a British drama, the film’s shoot is taking place in Los Angeles so it’s probable that the story will be an American one.
The only other nugget of information we have to go in is that the film will ‘explore themes of justice and redemption’, which sounds pretty compelling to us.
After the outsized pomp of Babylon and its pooing elephant stealing the opening scene, we are looking forward to Chazelle returning to something just a little more self-contained, like the brilliant Whiplash.
We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it but a 2026 release certainly looks likely.
