Despite having multiple projects lined up, Brad Pitt shows no signs of slowing down after completing work on David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth and Edward Berger’s upcoming thriller The Riders. According to Deadline, Pitt will star in and executive-produce Connector, a new film at Apple Original Films, with Sound of Metal director Darius Marder behind the camera.
Written by Darius and his sister Nina Marder, based on a story by Derek Cianfrance, the project “is set in 1970s’ New York and revolves around a working class legend, a sky-walking ironworker who takes on forces larger than himself.”
For anyone who remembers Marder’s powerhouse 2020 feature debut Sound of Metal, the pairing makes a ton of sense. That film starred Riz Ahmed as Ruben, a heavy-metal drummer whose life is upended when he suddenly loses his hearing. Anchored by immersive sound design that literally puts the audience inside Ruben’s shifting acoustic reality, Sound of Metal earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and walked away with two Oscars for Best Sound and Best Film Editing. Watching Marder bring that same visceral, grounded intensity to 1970s New York steelworkers, with Pitt leading the charge, is easily one of the more intriguing packages on Apple’s slate.
Connector marks the latest collaboration between Apple Original Films and Pitt’s Plan B studio, following their massive box-office run on F1 and Wolfs. The two companies are also teaming up on the upcoming sci-fi thriller The Waffle House Index, starring Obsession breakout Inde Navarrette. Written by Andrew Nunnelly and directed by Louis Paxton, the film takes its name from FEMA’s very real, informal disaster-response metric, which gauges the severity of a hurricane or storm based on whether local 24-hour Waffle House restaurants are open (green), operating on a limited menu (yellow), or completely shut down (red). In the movie, Navarrette plays Jane, a graveyard-shift worker at her local Waffle House who has to survive a massive incoming storm, along with some decidedly unearthly threats.
Between Pitt scaling skyscrapers in ’70s New York and Navarrette surviving whatever chaos hits the graveyard shift, Apple and Plan B are clearly keeping plenty of wild irons in the fire. Which of these upcoming projects has your attention first? Let us know in the comments section below!