Edgar Wright Exec Producing 'Kill List' Director's Next Film, 'Sightseers'
Ben Wheatley's second film, Kill List, is becoming quite a conversation piece as it makes the rounds of a couple festivals. The film is described as a blend of domestic drama, hired-killer thriller and mystical horror that works in a surprising and sometimes very visceral manner. (Check out trailers here and here.) The director (who also did Down Terrace) is using the Kill List momentum to set up a few other projects. One of them, Sightseers, is a dark comedy that will be exec produced by Edgar Wright.The Playlist talked to Wheatley at tne Empire Big Screen fest this past weekend, where he described three projects that he's got in the works:
I'm busy. We've got two three films we're doing at the moment, we're doing a film with Nick Frost next year, "I, Macrobane," and we're in prep at the moment, we start shooting in six weeks with a film called "Sightseers" with Big Talk, and then we're doing an American sci-fi film, but produced from the U.K, so, maybe in a few years people might sit up. But as long as we've got enough money to keep making stuff there's no reason to necessarily go out there.
Here are some details on each of those projects.
Sightseers is written by Alice Lowe (who acted in Hot Fuzz and Garth Marenghi's Dark Place) and Steve Oram, and is "a dark comedy about a pair of psychotic caravaners" (make of that what you will) that will be produced by Film4 and Big Talk, the company behind Edgar Wright's films and Attack the Block.
Then there's I, Macrobane, which in addition to Nick Frost will feature Michael Smiley (Spaced, Down Terrace, Kill List) playing someone named George Clooney. Again: make of that what you will. The director has previously said the film is "about two guys who, when they were kids, burned their school down. They've been sent to separate detention centers never to be seen together again, and then they meet up in their late thirties and go on a rampage. It's a knock-about comedy."
There's no real detail out in the wild about the bigger sci-fi film, but it's something to look forward to. Ben Wheatley is really looking like a director who is capitalizing on the skills he showed in Down Terrace, and is on the verge of seriously coming into his own.