Out of the three movies
Mike Fleming at Deadline suggests might be
Tony Scott's 2011 project, there's one I'm gunning for more than others and here's a clue - it's the one that doesn't star
Shia LaBeouf! The movie in question is
Potzdamer Platz, a crime drama about two soldiers in a New Jersey-based family who attempt to take their deadly gangster business global. The most recent draft was turned in by
Sexy Beast writers
David Scinto and
Louis Mellis - (yes,
Sexy Beast! and this year's
44 Inch Chest, though I ain't seen it yet) at Fox 2000.
Buddy Giovinazzo wrote the original script,
based on his book. Earlier this year a Puerto Rico January shoot was muted with
Mickey Rourke leading (still attached),
Javier Bardem and
Jason Statham circling - and Scott announcing he wants to bring in
Christopher Walken, Johnny Hallyday, Al Pacino and even the five-year retired
Gene Hackman to co-star! It certainly sounds a class or two above Scott's recent movies, as entertaining as they are. The full blurb makes it sound
Soprano's-esque;
"A New York Mafia crime family, known as the Franchise, sets up base on the biggest construction site in Europe, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, setting in train a destructive confrontation with the Russian Mafia. Tony, the youngest hit-man in the history of the Franchise, is sent in first, to terrorise and soften up the opposition, which he does with catastrophic results when an innocent 14 year old girl is killed. Feeling guilt and shame over a life spent destroying everything he's ever laid his hands on, Tony decides to change his life, especially after he falls in love with Monica, a medical student from East Berlin. But he finds changing his life of violence and cruelty nearly impossible to do. Torn between his loyalty to the Franchise, his only family, and his feelings of love for Monica and the redemption she can offer, Tony tries to balance a life in both worlds, the criminal and the scarier world of normal life; with tragically mixed results. Action-packed, sexy and filmic, Potsdamer Platz reveals the dark and threatening world of contemporary Berlin after the wall came down a city of two halves flooded with new money and in the throes of economic transformation, ripe with opportunity for the forces of organised crime".
As
Potzdamer Platz is a square in Berlin and the shoot is now taking place in South America, I think it's fair to say a title change is forthcoming. The others I would still turn up opening night to see (Scott is always worth his admission fee) but in truth are slightly less intriguing;
Paramount's adaptation of
John Grisham's recent legal thriller
The Associate with Shia LaBeouf (likely to be a derivative of the dime-a-dozen 90's 'innocent man driven to go bad by his employers' thrillers with LaBeouf once again trying to desperately be the next
Tom Cruise), though there's an above norm interest considering it comes from a
William Monahan (The Departed) screenplay.
And
Hell's Angels - a Donnie Brasco style thriller focusing on a cop who infiltrates the legendary biker gang with Mickey Rourke as Sonny Barger (how's that for awesome casting?) and Shia LaBeouf to play the cop. Original
Rise of the Apes writer
Scott Frank turned his attention to the screenplay after being axed on that movie, and his final draft is imminent at Fox 2000. With Rourke it sounds cool but LaBeouf,
seriously, why? Oh and there's
talk today of Scott directing
Vin Diesel's long-gestated
Hannibal The Conqueror epic (early discussions have taken place according to the actor) and the probably untrue rumour coming out of San Diego Comic Con linking
Tony Scott to a Wolverine sequel. Both are period movies that don't particularly sound like they should be helmed by Tony Scott, his attachment would feel a bit off. Wrong. Out of place. But again - Potzdamer Platz, as little as we know about it, sounds like it could be something special, especially if he can keep that cast for his multi-cultural tale.