half_nelson

Neil Marshall was initially supposed to take on the director’s chair for this one but he had to be sidelined. Now there is news that Hugh Jackman also had to be send home packing.

Drive is a film based on a book by James Sallis novel of the same title. It centers on a stuntman whose already exciting existence is jolted when he discovers that a contract has been put out on his life.

Marshall actually had to leave because of the work on Centurion with Michael Fassbender. This film will be out later this year.

Now Nicolas Winding Refn is all set to take Ryan Gosling on board to make this film happen. Winding Refn just told:

“Hopefully my next is a movie with Ryan Gosling at a studio in America. It is called Drive and it is about a stuntman by day, a getaway driver by night.”

So this will be the film we have been talking about and our super excited. Here is a synopsis

“I drive. That’s what I do. All I do.” So declares the enigmatic Driver in this masterfully convoluted neo-noir, which ranges from the dive bars and flyblown motels of Los Angeles to seedy strip malls dotting the Arizona desert.

A stunt driver for movies, Driver finds more excitement as a wheelman during robberies, but when a heist goes sour, a contract is put on his head and his survival skills burn up the pavement. Author of the popular six-novel series set in New Orleans featuring detective Lew Griffin (The Long-Legged Fly, etc.) and such stand-alone crime novels as Cypress Grove, Sallis won’t disappoint fans who enjoy his usual quirky literary stylings.

Reading a crime paperback, Driver covers “a few more lines till he fetched up on the word desuetude. What the hell kind of word was that?” Lines such as “Time went by, which is what time does, what it is” provide the perfect existential touch. In this short novel, expanded from his story in Dennis McMillan’s monumental anthology Measures of Poison, Sallis gives us his most tightly written mystery to date, worthy of comparison to the compact, exciting oeuvre of French noir giant