2 Attachment(s)
Paul Greengrass’ Norwegian Terrorist Thriller Acquired By Netflix
Netflix has landed Oscar-nominated Captain Phillips and Jason Bourne director Paul Greengrass’ next project, a planned film about Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. The streaming company reportedly outbid five other studios to make the deal, yet more evidence of Netflix’s commitment to becoming a huge player in the feature film production and distribution realm.
Since the hiring of former Universal executive Scott Stuber as Head of Original Films, Netflix has accelerated its efforts to acquire feature film projects. Multiple new films have been announced under Stuber’s watch, including Justin Lin’s Black Panthers drama The Stand Off, Tom Hardy’s Navy SEAL thriller War Party, and Gareth Evans’ revenge thriller Apostle, among others.
Deadline reports that Netflix has added to their impressive roster of upcoming productions by outbidding five other studios to land director Paul Greengrass’ movie about Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian extremist who in 2011 went on a murderous rampage at a youth camp, killing 77 people. Greengrass is set to shoot the movie in Norway with local actors beginning this fall, working with a budget of around $20 million.
Though Greengrass has become associated with the highly-stylized Bourne series, the director also has established a reputation as a meticulous crafter of true life stories about people under extreme duress. Greengrass received an Oscar nomination in 2007 for United 93, his hyper-realistic account of the heroic actions of passengers on the titular plane after its hijacking by 9/11 terrorists. In 2013, Greengrass directed Tom Hanks in the Oscar-nominated Captain Phillips, a very Hanksian regular-guy-becoming-a-hero story about the hijacking of an ocean freighter by Somali pirates. Considering the very sobering subject matter, we can expect Greengrass’ Breivik film to more resemble United 93 or Captain Phillips than his three Bourne films.
Reportedly, Greengrass is putting his planned Eliot Ness movie Ness on the back-burner in order to make his Breivik film. Greengrass’ planned Martin Luther King movie Memphis appears to have stalled, too.
Landing Greengrass’ new project is just another feather in the cap for Netflix as they continue building their catalog of original releases. Already in 2017, Netflix has released the Brad Pitt war film War Machine, Bong Joon-ho’s animal rights fable Okja and the controversial anorexia drama To the Bone. Later this year they will release the fantasy buddy-cop movie Bright from director David Ayer and writer Max Landis, starring Will Smith. The streaming outfit is also producing Martin Scorsese’s ambitious decades-spanning gangster film The Irishman starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. They also keep churning out Adam Sandler movies too…for better or for worse.
Source
