It’s been a minute since we’ve seen anything new from Nicolas Winding Refn, and to thank us for waiting so patiently, he’s about to give us over 900 minutes of new material. Yes, 900 minutes of blood-oozing, neon-lit violence directed by the Danish filmmaker and scored by Cliff Martinez. Is it Christmas?
When he hasn’t been busy curating his streaming service of exploitation films, The Neon Demon filmmaker has been working on his upcoming Amazon crime series, Too Old To Die Young. Details have been minimal, but Refn’s frequent collaborator Martinez revealed some new information that will be amazing news for every Refn fan, and bad news for anyone who prefers short-and-sweet episodic TV. In an interview with ScreenDaily (h/t Indiewire), the Drive composer said Too Old To Die Young, which he’s scoring, will be comprised of 10 episodes that are around 90 minutes long each. He referred to the series as a “16-hour movie,” meaning we may be getting some extra, extra long episodes tucked in there.
The series, which Refn co-wrote with comics veteran Ed Brubaker, follows Teller as a grieving cop investigating Los Angeles’ criminal underbelly, which includes cartel assassins, Yakuza soldiers, and the Russian mafia. (Yup, sounds like the Refn series we’d expect.) Jena Malone reunites with her Neon Demon director to co-star alongside Billy Baldwin, John Hawkes, Callie Hernandez, Nell Tiger Free, Babs Olusanmokun, Cristina Rodlo, and August Aguilera. Too Old To Die Young is set to premiere on Amazon later this year. Are you ready for 16 hours of gnarly violence and electric visuals (shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji!) all set to a synth-heavy score? The only acceptable answer is “hell yes.”
33 Comments
Does Fuck Jerry want me to watch this?
Ha! I don’t have Amazon Prime, so that’ll teach him!
People still get excited for this guy after that movie where Ryan Gossling got his ass kicked repeatedly in Thailand? That was the worse shit ever to the point where I reevaluated my opinion on his entire set of work.
I love that film.
Neon Demon and Only God Forgives both felt like they were 16 hours long, so this will prolly make me feel like the kid at the end of “The Jaunt.”
JUST HOOK IT INTO MY VEINS
I’m ordinarily a fan of NWR; aside from his singular obsession to cast Ryan Gosling in everything he makes, he can draw on some very weird, very cool looking, very sickening scenes. I’m looking at you, Neon Demon.But his quality seems to have gone down after his most popular movie Drive, and I’m worried that may be the best thing he ever does and everything else is trying to capture that magic. Only God Forgives was a stylistic mess, and Neon Demon was interesting, but rated at about a 100 on the “holy fuck I can’t believe that actually happened” scale. Plus, who asked for each episode of this “tv show” to be the length of a movie? Get your directors under control, Amazon, or else the pacing of this show is going to be hot garbage.
A 16-hour movie. Ah, so it’s a formless mess then
Yes, you’re right. Refn and Brubaker clearly have no idea how to make stories. Thanks so much for sharing your genius.
It’s as if Refn saw The Return and thought “yeah I can do that.”
I ENJOY THE WORKS OF BOTH BRUBAKER AND REFN SO THIS IS GONNA BE A LOTTA FUN FOR ME, SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T GO ONLINE TO BITCH ABOUT THINGS HE WILL NOT WATCH 🙂
Oh, you’re one of *those* people. Your positivity disgusts me, sir.No, but seriously, I’ve got a huge geek-boner for this thing already. What other Frankenstein’s Monster will the movie gods come up with next? An Edgar Wright/Grant Morrison collaboration?
I never wanted to be That Person, but goddamn I hate Miles Teller and his stupid face. Like anything he’s in I’m guaranteed to find him an unlikeable, uncharismatic asshole. In the right context that leans into that (Whiplash) he can work, but as a leading man I’m ever meant to sympathize with? No, get him out of here.
I was SUPER amped for this project until I saw it was starring Teller. I’m significantly less amped to spend 16 hours with him
I even like Only God Forgives so I’ll give it the old college try but I’m definitely going in with more suspicion than I would otherwise.
Me reading this post: “Yes! Great! Awesome! Even Better!! [Read “The series follows Teller”] “Godfuckingmotherfuckingpieceofshit-don’tevenwannafuckinggoddamnwatchthisshitpieceofgoddamn…”
I’m not necessarily crazy about Teller, but I do not care. I utterly love Refn as a director and Brubaker as a writer. LA crime insanity by those two could star the reanimated corpse of Jim Varney and I’d host a party for a binge watch on opening night.
I’d be very in for Only Vern Forgives
I’ll see your Miles Teller and raise you a Billy Baldwin. It’s the anti-charisma series. I’ll still check it out, but it’s starting on the one yard line.
I’m hoping they both die in horrible ways in the 1st episode.
He also chose ryan gosling, another stupid face, and it didn’t go that bad(well, at last once).
In. While this has the potential to be a boring and aimless mess, lets hope Refn crushes it to make the greatest ultra-violent crime epic ever made. Alas, the final product will likely be somewhere in between. So I’ll instead look forward to an unsung hero from the internet cutting it into a more palatable 3-hour “greatest hits” cut to be a pretty-good ultra-violent crime epic.
Brubaker, Refn -and- Martinez? I did not know I wanted this utterly perfect combination until I learned of it. It makes me feel just… so goddamn happy already.
Yeah, I was sort of luke-warm on this until I saw that it was co-written by Brubaker as that dude knows how to write a hard-boiled detective story and hopefully he helped keep the script tight. This honestly seems like a perfect match.
WHO IS TELLER THE ARTICLE USES HIS LAST NAME ONCE LIKE WE’RE FRIENDS
It’s just Teller. There’s more to him than magic, you know.
He’s not the first Teller!
the trailer for this looked amazing. Looked like the video that Duran Duran dreamt of making for Chauffeur.
(and yes, that’s a compliment)
My fun Cliff Martinez story:
Back in the dark ages, I worked for the Forest Service. One day, a call comes in on the radio from my co-worker out on a patrol asking if any of us at the Ranger Station had gotten any check-ins from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It seems they were all backpacking together (with Cliff, their original drummer), and Flea (I think) cut himself while whittling. He and some others hiked out a bit early to seek medical attention, and by the time Cliff got off the trail, they were nowhere to be found. I guess after going to the ER, they just drove back down to LA. Anyway, we let Cliff use our shower, then he took me and my co-worker out for Mexican food.
Glad to see Jena Malone in this, she gave the best performance in The Neon Demon. The more time passes, the more I think The Neon Demon was a classic. If it had been intended as a show business satire, then it would have been weak, but I think it was really about raw human need. Beauty in the film is always about desire, never about art, even ostensibly. And it had far more of a visual impact on me than Drive, beautiful as Drive was.
Drive was kind of fine, but The Neon Demon was one of the worst things I have ever watched. And I have watched some really bad things.
The series, which Refn co-wrote with comics veteran Ed Brubaker, follows Teller as a grieving cop investigating Los Angeles’ criminal underbelly, which includes cartel assassins, Yakuza soldiers, and the Russian mafia. Oliver, you can’t refer to someone only by their last name in an article if you haven’t referred to them by their full name previously in the same article (or, in this case, at all). Between this and referring to Aziz Ansari casually as “disgraced” on the same day, it’s depressing that you have a job as a writer.