Nothing causes audiences to butt heads quite like a new Nicolas Winding Refn film. From “Pusher” to “The Neon Demon,” Refn’s work has been described as brilliant, terrible, pretentious, gorgeous, and pretty much every other adjective in the dictionary, inspiring half the cinephiles out there to declare him one of the best talents working today – and the other half to treat him with derision. With no films on the horizon for 2017, fans and detractors alike were excited to see Refn promoting his next project, a crime series set to shoot later this year: “Too Old To Die Young” for Amazon studios starring Miles Teller.
Dear Friends, Happy Easter🐰 pic.twitter.com/g0HmbH2w56
— byNWR (@NicolasWR) April 14, 2017
(Editor’s Note: We’ve updated this piece to more clearly identify that Refn’s trailer is for his upcoming Amazon Studios television series.)
Back in February, it was announced that Refn would be partnering with acclaimed graphic novelist Ed Brubaker for a series about the criminal underworld in Los Angeles, but I read that press release twice and nowhere did it mention that one of the characters would be played by a man in an inflatable dinosaur suit. It’s certainly possible that Refn has decided to lean into his surrealistic influences and make his crime show a riff on David Lynch‘s “Twin Peaks,” which, given Refn’s admiration for the filmmaker – Refn’s films are frequently discussed through the lens of Lynch’s work – was probably an inevitability.
Whatever Refn has in mind for audiences, we know that it’ll be both highly anticipated and one of the more contentious projects of the year. That sounds pretty fine by us.
4/25/17 Update: Refn’s dropped another teaser, but be forewarned, it’s not much.
Dear Friends … pic.twitter.com/ysltacZr45
— byNWR (@NicolasWR) April 25, 2017
