Adolescence director Philip Barantini is set to remake 1972 Steve McQueen thriller The Getaway for Netflix. But will it return to the original book? A year after Adolescence became an international talking point, director Philip Barantini has another project lined up at Netflix. He’s now set to direct a remake of The Getaway, the 1972 ... The Getaway | Adolescence director to helm Steve McQueen remake for Netflix
Adolescence director Philip Barantini is set to remake 1972 Steve McQueen thriller The Getaway for Netflix. But will it return to the original book?
A year after Adolescence became an international talking point, director Philip Barantini has another project lined up at Netflix.
He’s now set to direct a remake of The Getaway, the 1972 thriller starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. About a picturesque couple of career criminals who go on the run following a bank robbery gone awry, the original film was directed with macho grit by Sam Peckinpah, and was an early screenwriting credit for Walter Hill.
Fewer people are likely to remember the 1994 remake starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, directed by Roger Donaldson, though it did have an impressive supporting cast, including Jennifer Tilly Michael Madsen, David Morse and James Woods (back when he scary in a charismatic, cool way).
At any rate, The Hollywood Reporter writes that the Netflix version of The Getaway will be written by Peter Craig, who wrote Ben Affleck’s rather good crime thriller The Town and Matt Reeves’ luxuriously bleak The Batman. Barantini’s probably putting the finishing touches to Elona Holmes 3, also for Netflix and due to stream on the 1st July.
The unanswered question is whether Barantini and Craig will return to author Jim Thompson’s 1958 book of the same name. Neither of those earlier adaptations used its ending; the ‘Getaway’ mentioned in the title is a place called El Rey – a closed-off sanctuary for criminals that has a few financial strings attached for its residents.
Without spoiling things, the book’s final section is much darker than either movie; Thompson had originally been hired to write the script for the 1972 version, but was fired following disagreements with McQueen. Those disagreements may have been over the thriller’s conclusion, which is far more upbeat in the resulting film.
Netflix has some form when it comes to tepid remakes of stone-cold classics; the 2024 version of The Wages Of Fear is best avoided. But a new adaptation of The Getaway, with that surreal ending, made entirely in Barantini’s one-shot style? We’d stream the shoes off that.
More on all this as we get it.
