Only God Forgives talk: Refn calls it a fairy tale, compares it to Drive

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

In the new issue of Empire magazine (which MTV got their hands on), there’s a special little feature on Nicolas Winding Refn’s highly-anticipated follow-up to DRIVE, ONLY GOD FORGIVES, which finds Ryan Gosling playing a gangster hiding in Thailand who is hunted by a rogue cop.

It’s a no-brainer that this movie will be cool (there are few guarantees in this life, but I feel this is one of them) and apparently the Empire reporter lucky enough to find himself on the set of FORGIVES is thinking along the same lines; he had this to pass along: “If you liked Drive, you are going to have an aneurysm over Only God Forgives.”

That’s an aneurysm worth having…

According to Refn, the film won’t deviate too much from the hypnotic tone DRIVE established. “This one is very much a continuation of that language,” he said. “It’s based on real emotions, but set in a heightened reality. It’s a fairy tale.”

He goes on to reveal that originally, FORGIVES was meant to be his next after the hyper-weird VALHALLA RISING. “I wanted to do a Western, a straight up gangster movie after ‘Valhalla Rising,’ ” Refn said. “But all that changed.”

As for Gosling, he’s got some encouraging words for us regarding the project: “It was the strangest thing I’d ever read,” he said. “But I was in.”

We’re in too, Ryan. We’re in too…

DRIVE’s Carey Mulligan