Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn is hoping to shoot a new film in Tokyo next year – and it seems it won’t be quite as family-friendly as his Famous Five adaptation.
Venice Film Festival is in full swing, and it seems that the entirety of Hollywood has landed in Italy.
Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn is at the Lido too with his short film Beauty Is Not A Sin, but the filmmaker also told Variety that he’s planning his return to feature filmmaking, something we reported on back in February. Winding Refn swore off Hollywood years ago and hasn’t made a feature since 2016’s The Neon Demon.
Variety details that Winding Refn is planning to shoot his new, still-untitled film in Tokyo, which will be in both English and Japanese. Winding Refn also described his return to feature filmmaking as an act of “defiance”.
“It’s a really interesting time to make movies because it’s such a chaotic situation,” the director said.
“So going back and making a theatrical feature film again is almost like — not starting over — but with all the changes in our societies in the last five years and technology changes, it almost seems like the right thing to do for me.”
The Drive director is keeping all story details close to his chest at the moment, but he did tease that the new film “will have a lot of glitter and lot of sex and violence”.
The last few years have seen Winding Refn turn his gaze towards episodic storytelling with some TV projects. He helmed Too Old To Die Young for Prime Video in 2019, followed by Copenhagen Cowboy for Netflix and BBC adaptation The Famous Five in 2023.
Winding Refn also appeared in Hideo Kojima’s lauded Death Stranding videogame and is now working on a gaming project of his own.
”In a way, had the Lumiere brothers, when they invented film, invented computer games first, what would the world look like?” the director mused.
Once Winding Refn clarifies what his new projects are about, we’ll be sure to let you know.
