Netflix made waves last month when it entered the bidding war for theMax Landis-scripted supernatural cop thrillerBright, withDavid Ayerattached to direct andWill SmithandJoel Edgertonattached to star, and came out on top witha whopping $90 million deal. While that $90 million isn’t the budget for the movie—Netflix has to pay out the backend deals of the film’s stars given that it won’t be going wide theatrically—it’s still an enormous sum of money for a very hot project, and the acquisition ofBrightwas undoubtedly a statement that the streaming service is very much going to be in the business of making big movies.
While Warner Bros. is reportedly keen on getting Ayer back in the director’s chair forSuicide Squad 2ASAP, the filmmaker wants to do something different before diving back into that world, and it looks as thoughBrightis it. Just before the WB panel atCinemaCon, Collider’s own Steve Weintraub caught up with Ayer who confirmed thatBrightis indeed his next movie:
“That’s the next movie, we start shooting this fall. So it’s happening.”
Ayer previously noted that he chose to go to Netflix with the filmfor the creative freedom, and he told Steve thatBrightis very much envisioned as a unique and hard-R-rated film:
“No one’s done it this way. Every time someone tries to add reality to some fantastical elements it’s always some kind of PG-13 kind of movie. This thing’s gonna be hard-R, it’s gonna be very realistic, psychologically realistic, which I think lets us push the fantastical elements even more. It’s gonna be grounded and real and I think it’s gonna straddle a lot of genres. It’s gonna be one for the books.”
This certainly sounds like an interesting project for Ayer, and maybe even more interesting for Smith, who has eschewed rough and R-rated fare for most of his career. With the pedigree on tap, and the uniqueness of the project going to Netflix, this is certainly one of the most intriguing films in the works at the moment.
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