The Fall Guy will feature Ryan Gosling leading the cast as a moonlighting stuntman – director David Leitch has given an update.
David Leitch is currently doing the press rounds for Bullet Train, which lands here in the UK tomorrow. You can catch our own interview with Leitch here. Whilst promoting Bullet Train, Leitch dropped a couple of interesting nuggets regarding the upcoming adaptation of the 1980s TV series, The Fall Guy. The film is set to feature Ryan Gosling in the role made famous by The Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors, and will begin production in Australia just a couple of months from now.
Firstly, Leitch gave a few details about the aim of the project, explaining: “I can tell you a little. It’s a reimagining of the show from the ’80s, the late ’70s, early ’80s, starring Lee Majors. It’s about a stuntman who gets embroiled in some crazy drama outside of the movie business, and mayhem ensues. And so, there’s fun and action, and we’re trying to make a big summer movie with it. And Universal’s incredibly supportive, and Ryan’s been really collaborative on the material, and we’re starting shooting in October. And so, we’re in pre-production right now.”
Of course, we’ve already seen Ryan Gosling play a moonlighting stunt driver in 2011’s Drive where his character was also a wheelman for high-stakes heists. Now, it looks like Gosling will portray TV’s most famous stuntman, the stunningly-named Colt Seavers, whose heart of gold leads him to become embroiled in all sorts of adventures beyond falling from tall buildings or rolling brand new cars (just two of the brilliant lines from the lyrics to the 1980s show’s wonderful theme tune).
Leitch also went on to talk about his own experiences as a stuntman and stunt co-ordinator will feed into the project, not to mention each collaborator’s experience of the wonderful and weird world of Hollywood: “We’ll definitely want to have fun with the movie world,” added Leitch. “I think, again, for all of us involved, it’s sort of like, ‘Yes, it’s about a stuntman.’ So whatever drama that’s happening to this guy, it’s like any other movie. It’s a great world for that drama to be happening in. And then it’s so rich with anecdotes from Kelly [McCormick, producer]’s experiences, my experiences, Ryan’s experiences. We’re definitely going to have a lot of fun playing with the movie, our movie experiences inside of this movie.”
Gosling already has a few interesting roles coming up. He’ll be playing Ken in the upcoming Barbie film and portraying the lead character in The Wolfman. Currently, he’s in the Netflix action thriller, The Gray Man opposite Chris Evans and whilst we enjoyed that film, we’re hoping that The Fall Guy, a film focused around stunts, won’t resort to the green screen CGI approach in the same way that The Gray Man did in a couple of its bigger action set-pieces. With Leitch having the terrific Atomic Blonde on his CV, a brilliant action film made by practical means, we’re fervently hoping for more of the same with The Fall Guy. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
—
Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.
