Nicolas Winding Refn’s next project will mark his first feature film since 2016’s The Neon Demon. More here.
Nicolas Winding Refn is one of those provocative directors who seems to revel in controversy. After wowing the world with the incredibly stylish Drive in 2011, the director follow it with two projects that foregrounded violence and other shocking elements such as necrophilia and cannibalism in his next two films: Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon.
Then Refn all but disappeared from feature filmmaking, choosing instead to dabble in a seres of left-field short films and focus on TV work, including the slow-moving crime drama series Too Old To Die Young for Amazon Prime Video in 2019. He also recently produced an adaptation of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five for the BBC.
Whatever he’s dabbled in, Refn has seemed keen to avoid Hollywood, claiming back in 2022 on a Deadline podcast that “Hollywood is very seductive and intoxicating, but it’s also a system that’s falling apart desperately. And I think they’re doing it to themselves more than anything else. Who knows? I would love to make something grandiose and big, but I would want to maintain my freedom, my impulse and creative control.”
According to World of Reel, Refn is about to end his period away from feature film directing. Details on this one are scant, with the outlet reporting that the director reportedly is shooting a new film in Korea this September.
That’s not a lot to go on, but we do hope that Refn continues to be uncompromising in his vision. While not everybody will be a fan of his films, cinema needs provocative voices to challenge audiences. Nicolas Winding Refn is very much that.
We’ll bring you more details on his next project as we hear them, but given that Refn is said to have fallen in love with painting in his years away from directing, you can expect his next project to be his most painterly yet… and that’s saying something for a filmmaker who has always traded in gorgeous-looking films. More on this next project as we hear it.
