“Snabba Cash” means “easy money” in Swedish and Warner Bros. hopes to grab some as they’ve won the bidding war for the buzzed about film and have lined up teen heartthrob Zac Efron to play the lead the role.
The film, which unspooled at the Berlin Film Festival and quickly caused a bidding war over the remake rights is a thriller that “follows three interconnected storylines involving drugs and organized crime, with the main character a young man who hopes to strike it rich quickly by becoming a runner for a coke dealer.” Efron is in line to play the “young man” who is a money launderer.
The film apparently caused quiet a stir with Universal, Summit, Paramount, Fox, the Weinstein Co. and Mandate all competing to secure rights to the film. While Warner Bros. has it for now, the deal has a progress-to-production or “short fuse” clause which means they have a limited time frame to get this project moving forward or else they lose the rights.
The trailer for the original Swedish language film is below and its easy to see why studios were quick to jump all over it. It’s a slick piece of filmmaking but it remains to be seen if does anything to distinguish itself in a genre that already is flooded with less-than-noteworthy entries. As for Efron, it will mark his second attempt at a non-tween oriented role (his first was in the little seen Richard Linklater film “Me And Orson Welles”). Will audiences buy him as a money launderer who rolls with gun-toting drug dealers? Guess we’ll have to wait and see but then again, nobody thought Justin Timberlake would be able to make the big screen leap either.
