Has Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn discovered his muse? And who is it--Ryan Gosling or Carey Mulligan?
As Refn’s Drive races around the festival circuit ahead of its Sept. 16 opening, the director has added another potential follow up to his growing list of possible films. While accepting an award on Gosling’s behalf at the Deauville Film Festival in France, Refn told journalists (via The Hollywood Reporter) that he’d cast Mulligan in the lead role of I Walk With the Dead, a sex thriller he has been working on for some time now.
Details on the film’s plot are nonexistent, and we’re kind of wondering when Refn will have the time to get around to Dead. As THR notes, the filmmaker’s about to dive into Only God Forgives, a Western he’ll shoot in Bagkok with Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas and Luke Evans as his cast. And his name also has been attached to a number of in-development projects, from a Logan’s Run remake (with Gosling) to a romantic comedy (also with Gosling) that reportedly was written by Drive standout Albert Brooks.
If you’ve seen Drive, you know Refn coaxed devastating performances from his cast, so the idea of him “keeping the band together” for any number of projects is alright by me. But as with any director who is about to explode, Refn’s plate is beyond full, and he’s going to have to be picky with subsequent projects. If you ask me (or any red-blooded male movie fan), a sex thriller with Mulligan should be moved to the top of the “to do” list. But after Bronson and Drive, I’ll line up for any Refn picture, and trust him to make the movies he wants to make when he wants to make them.
