We mostly know Albert Brooks (BROADCAST NEWS, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE, FINDING NEMO) as a talented comedian with a genial demeanor — even when he played a criminal in OUT OF SIGHT. But he’ll be flexing his mean muscles as a heavy the vehicular action flick DRIVE.
Deadline says that Brooks will play “a truly dangerous badass” in the movie, which stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and Bryan Cranston. Nicolas Winding Refn (BRONSON, PUSHER) is directing the project.
Based on the James Sallis novel, the modern noir tale is set in the seamy underside of Southern California, and follows a Hollywood stuntman simply known as Driver who fills his downtime as a robbery wheelman, until a job goes awry and he ends up with a price on his head. Brooks is a terrifying New York mobster who has taken up residence in Los Angeles.
Hugh Jackman was previously planning to get behind the wheel, with Neil Marshall (THE DESCENT) once attached to direct.
Perhaps even more intriguing: Brooks has been writing a sci-fi novel, which Deadline says “takes a serious look at what might be happening 20 years in the future, when cancer has been eradicated and life expectancies have been pushed up to 110, making 70 the new middle age. That creates overpopulation and a simmering resentment among 20somethings who aren’t getting the career opportunities they once did because the older crowd won’t get out of the way. Throw in a cataclysmic natural disaster, and the complications of reaching out to the global community for help, and Brooks has created a storyline much different from any of his movie scripts.”
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