Tag: Guy Ritchie

  • Guy Ritchie’s ‘The Covenant’ explores the soldier/interpreter dynamic in war

    By Associated Press

    There is a line in “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant ” in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s Army Sgt. John Kinley is having a disagreement with Dar Salim’s Ahmed, the man assigned to be his interpreter in Afghanistan, who has gone beyond straight translation and into the realm of strategy. Kinley tells him that he’s there to translate. Ahmed responds that he’s an interpreter.

    The line is Gyllenhaal’s favourite and a perfect encapsulation of the dynamic between the two men, who, despite themselves, forge a bond that goes beyond words and has both risking their lives to save the other in the name of a debt.

    It’s also perhaps the only line in the final film that was pre-written, Richie laughed in a recent interview with The Associated Press alongside his actors. This may seem like a strange or backhanded thing for a director to say about a script, except for the fact that it was one that Ritchie co-wrote. He’d been inspired by several documentaries in which he became fascinated with the relationship between soldier and interpreter.

    The film, which has garnered some of the best reviews in Ritchie’s career, opens in theatres nationwide on Friday.

    “I was moved by the rather complicated and paradoxical bonds that seemed to be fused by the trauma of war between the interpreters and their colleagues, so to speak, on the other side of the cultural divide and how all of that evaporated under duress,” Ritchie said. “The irony of war is the depths to which the human spirit is allowed to express itself that in any other sort of day-to-day situation is never allowed. It’s very hard to articulate the significance and that profundity of those bonds. My job was to try and capture that spirit within a film and within a very simple narrative.”

    The script, though, is merely a starting prompt. On set, the ideas are fluid, the conversations run deep and, his actors say, the creativity flourishes. Just ask Gyllenhaal, who met Ritchie 15 or so years ago at a Christmas party. They had an immediate “energetic connection” but hadn’t figured out a way to work together until this project.

    “The first thing he said was, ‘This is a very reluctant relationship. I don’t want any sentimentality in this movie and not between these two people. I want this to be a sort of begrudging connection.’”Gyllenhaal loved the challenge of always being on your toes for new ideas, some that even became integral callbacks in the final film.

    “Quite literally, it is a table,” Gyllenhaal said. “At that table is where those exchanges are and those ideas are shared and created. And like any good table, it’s usually met with a meal as well — mini meals, large meals — and the movie is found. It really is great fun. Especially if you love food.”

    Salim, an Iraqi-born, Danish-raised actor in one of his first major Hollywood roles, was a bit intimidated by the names around him at first. But by week two he had found a groove and was even so bold as to not only challenge Ritchie to a game of chess but then win – though there is some teasing disagreement about who exactly won that first match.

    “Once you’re invited into that circle, it’s a very unique experience,” Salim said. “It releases energy that’s normally not there on a set.”

    Ritchie has had five films released since 2019, and, including “The Covenant,” two this year alone because of business complications when STX shifted focus away from distribution and films like “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” got caught in a kind of limbo. He has become an almost unwitting case study in distribution for an industry in flux and recovering from a pandemic and this $55 million war film is yet another test in some ways. But that’s not something that troubles him much.

    “Sands move so quickly within the industry that you almost can’t focus on the release strategies and exactly how the movie unfurls to the public, you just got to focus on what your day job is, which is the work,” Ritchie said. “You’d like it to unfurl as elegantly as possible, but there are some things that are just beyond your control, and the business itself is in a constant state of flux, but it has been since it began.”

    In Gyllenhaal’s three decades of moviemaking, he’s learned that great stories will find their way, even if it’s not in the moment, “though that’s what we seem to all be a bit obsessed with.”

    “The Covenant,” Gyllenhaal said, has “A real classical sense to it. It’s a simple story, it can last for a long time.”

    He even found himself “blubbering” on the first watch, which surprised him as someone who doesn’t often cry at movies and certainly not at ones he’s in, which he usually can barely watch.

    “I was so moved by it because I think it moved beyond the experience we had,” Gyllenhaal said. “In the end, it is a story about humanity. It’s a story about the action of good and the action of good not always having to be sentimentalized.”

    Ritchie, who had already stayed chatting with his actors well past his press availability “hard out,” went even further and, seemingly, back to those tables on the set in Spain where the movie revealed itself.

    “It wishes to express something that’s beyond altruism, it wishes to express something that feels at a profound level connected, and anything that can force that connection that’s beyond the duality of good and bad. It is something that’s more sacred than good or bad,” Ritchie said.

    “It is curious because the name covenant seems to, although it’s somewhat biblical in its origin, it to me does capture what the essence of the story is. It’s a covenant that’s beyond good and bad. It’s a covenant that expresses an optimism about the fundamental aspect of the human spirit.”

    Gyllenhaal added: “See? Now you’ve had the experience of what it’s like sitting around a table with Mr. Ritchie on a movie.”

    WATCH TRAILER HERE: 

    There is a line in “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant ” in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s Army Sgt. John Kinley is having a disagreement with Dar Salim’s Ahmed, the man assigned to be his interpreter in Afghanistan, who has gone beyond straight translation and into the realm of strategy. Kinley tells him that he’s there to translate. Ahmed responds that he’s an interpreter.

    The line is Gyllenhaal’s favourite and a perfect encapsulation of the dynamic between the two men, who, despite themselves, forge a bond that goes beyond words and has both risking their lives to save the other in the name of a debt.

    It’s also perhaps the only line in the final film that was pre-written, Richie laughed in a recent interview with The Associated Press alongside his actors. This may seem like a strange or backhanded thing for a director to say about a script, except for the fact that it was one that Ritchie co-wrote. He’d been inspired by several documentaries in which he became fascinated with the relationship between soldier and interpreter.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    The film, which has garnered some of the best reviews in Ritchie’s career, opens in theatres nationwide on Friday.

    “I was moved by the rather complicated and paradoxical bonds that seemed to be fused by the trauma of war between the interpreters and their colleagues, so to speak, on the other side of the cultural divide and how all of that evaporated under duress,” Ritchie said. “The irony of war is the depths to which the human spirit is allowed to express itself that in any other sort of day-to-day situation is never allowed. It’s very hard to articulate the significance and that profundity of those bonds. My job was to try and capture that spirit within a film and within a very simple narrative.”

    The script, though, is merely a starting prompt. On set, the ideas are fluid, the conversations run deep and, his actors say, the creativity flourishes. Just ask Gyllenhaal, who met Ritchie 15 or so years ago at a Christmas party. They had an immediate “energetic connection” but hadn’t figured out a way to work together until this project.

    “The first thing he said was, ‘This is a very reluctant relationship. I don’t want any sentimentality in this movie and not between these two people. I want this to be a sort of begrudging connection.’”
    Gyllenhaal loved the challenge of always being on your toes for new ideas, some that even became integral callbacks in the final film.

    “Quite literally, it is a table,” Gyllenhaal said. “At that table is where those exchanges are and those ideas are shared and created. And like any good table, it’s usually met with a meal as well — mini meals, large meals — and the movie is found. It really is great fun. Especially if you love food.”

    Salim, an Iraqi-born, Danish-raised actor in one of his first major Hollywood roles, was a bit intimidated by the names around him at first. But by week two he had found a groove and was even so bold as to not only challenge Ritchie to a game of chess but then win – though there is some teasing disagreement about who exactly won that first match.

    “Once you’re invited into that circle, it’s a very unique experience,” Salim said. “It releases energy that’s normally not there on a set.”

    Ritchie has had five films released since 2019, and, including “The Covenant,” two this year alone because of business complications when STX shifted focus away from distribution and films like “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” got caught in a kind of limbo. He has become an almost unwitting case study in distribution for an industry in flux and recovering from a pandemic and this $55 million war film is yet another test in some ways. But that’s not something that troubles him much.

    “Sands move so quickly within the industry that you almost can’t focus on the release strategies and exactly how the movie unfurls to the public, you just got to focus on what your day job is, which is the work,” Ritchie said. “You’d like it to unfurl as elegantly as possible, but there are some things that are just beyond your control, and the business itself is in a constant state of flux, but it has been since it began.”

    In Gyllenhaal’s three decades of moviemaking, he’s learned that great stories will find their way, even if it’s not in the moment, “though that’s what we seem to all be a bit obsessed with.”

    “The Covenant,” Gyllenhaal said, has “A real classical sense to it. It’s a simple story, it can last for a long time.”

    He even found himself “blubbering” on the first watch, which surprised him as someone who doesn’t often cry at movies and certainly not at ones he’s in, which he usually can barely watch.

    “I was so moved by it because I think it moved beyond the experience we had,” Gyllenhaal said. “In the end, it is a story about humanity. It’s a story about the action of good and the action of good not always having to be sentimentalized.”

    Ritchie, who had already stayed chatting with his actors well past his press availability “hard out,” went even further and, seemingly, back to those tables on the set in Spain where the movie revealed itself.

    “It wishes to express something that’s beyond altruism, it wishes to express something that feels at a profound level connected, and anything that can force that connection that’s beyond the duality of good and bad. It is something that’s more sacred than good or bad,” Ritchie said.

    “It is curious because the name covenant seems to, although it’s somewhat biblical in its origin, it to me does capture what the essence of the story is. It’s a covenant that’s beyond good and bad. It’s a covenant that expresses an optimism about the fundamental aspect of the human spirit.”

    Gyllenhaal added: “See? Now you’ve had the experience of what it’s like sitting around a table with Mr. Ritchie on a movie.”

    WATCH TRAILER HERE: 

  • Guy Ritchie opens up about the possibility of ‘Aladdin’ sequel

    Express News Service

    Filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, the 2019 live-action film, received a great reception. Starring Mena Massoud and Will Smith, the film made over $1 billion at the box office. Recently, in an interview with Collider, Richie was asked about the possibility of a sequel.

    And expressing his happiness working with Disney, he said that for now, it is a wait-and-see circumstance. However, he also noted that he would be happy to do a sequel of Aladdin. 

    “I’d very much like to. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that experience. It was a great experience. That whole Disney thing, as you can imagine, is such a professional outfit. Just from that perspective, it was so much fun. I would very much like to, we’ll wait and see. We have been kicking some ideas around for some time now, but it’d be great to do, it would be great to go back there,” he added.

    Filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, the 2019 live-action film, received a great reception. Starring Mena Massoud and Will Smith, the film made over $1 billion at the box office. Recently, in an interview with Collider, Richie was asked about the possibility of a sequel.

    And expressing his happiness working with Disney, he said that for now, it is a wait-and-see circumstance. However, he also noted that he would be happy to do a sequel of Aladdin. 

    “I’d very much like to. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that experience. It was a great experience. That whole Disney thing, as you can imagine, is such a professional outfit. Just from that perspective, it was so much fun. I would very much like to, we’ll wait and see. We have been kicking some ideas around for some time now, but it’d be great to do, it would be great to go back there,” he added.

  • Guy Ritchie’s ‘Operation Fortune’ set to release in India on January 6

    By Express News Service

    Operation Fortune, the spy action comedy starring actors Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza and Hugh Grant, will release in theatres in India on January 6.

    The film is directed by Guy Ritchie and follows special agent Orson Fortune along with his operatives who recruit a Hollywood movie star to aid them with an undercover mission. Others part of the cast include Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone.

    Operation Fortune is backed by Miramax, with Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies, and Ritchie working on the screenplay. It has a runtime of 114 minutes. 

    Operation Fortune, the spy action comedy starring actors Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza and Hugh Grant, will release in theatres in India on January 6.

    The film is directed by Guy Ritchie and follows special agent Orson Fortune along with his operatives who recruit a Hollywood movie star to aid them with an undercover mission. Others part of the cast include Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone.

    Operation Fortune is backed by Miramax, with Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies, and Ritchie working on the screenplay. It has a runtime of 114 minutes.
     

  • Guy Ritchie to helm live-action Hercules film

    By Express News Service

    It has been reported that filmmaker Guy Ritchie will be helming a live-action feature film adaptation of Hercules for Disney.

    The Snatch-filmmaker had directed the highly successful live-action remake of Aladdin in 2019.

    According to Deadline, AGBO, the production house spearheaded by Joe & Anthony Russo will be producing the film and the producers are currently looking for writers to develop the first draft penned by Dave Callaham. Considering the nascency of the project, details such as the cast and crew are currently under tight wraps.

  • Hollywood filmmaker Guy Ritchie to direct live-action ‘Hercules’ film after “Aladdin”

    By PTI

    LOS ANGELES: Filmmaker Guy Ritchie has been roped in to direct the live-action adaptation of Disney’s classic animated film “Hercules”.

    According to Variety, the film will be produced by “Avengers: Endgame” directors Joe & Anthony Russo’s company AGBO  (also known as Gozie AGBO).

    Dave Callaham penned the first draft and the studio is currently in the process of hiring writers for the project. Ritchie has previously directed a live-action “Aladdin” movie for Disney. The filmmaker recently completed the shoot of his untitled action thriller with Jake Gyllenhaal.

  • Jake Gyllenhaal in talks for Guy Ritchie’s next

    By Express News Service

    Guy Ritchie and Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) are in negotiations to do a film together. As of yet, not many details regarding this upcoming project are known. But it has been confirmed that it will be produced by Miramax.

    The untitled film is expected to begin shooting at the end of this year. Ritchie’s most recent film was the action-thriller titled Wrath of Man, which was released earlier this year, and the director currently has Operation Fortune starring Jason Statham and Aubrey Plaza coming in January of next year.

    Gyllenhaal’s most recent film The Guilty premiered on Netflix on October 1. Earlier this week, he was confirmed to have signed on as John Prophet in the film Prophet, which is still in the pre-production stage.

    The actor is also set to star in Michael Bay’s upcoming thriller Ambulance, which is set to hit theatres in February of next year. 

  • Guy Ritchie to helm ‘Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ for Paramount

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: British filmmaker Guy Ritchie will be tackling the upcoming World War II movie “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” for Paramount.

    The movie is an adaptation of “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops” by Damien Lewis, reported Deadline.

    The book tells the true story of the top secret ‘butcher-and-bolt’ black ops units that former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill tasked with stopping the unstoppable German war machine.

    Paramount bought the rights to the book in 2015 and writers such as Arash Amel, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson develop drafts.

    Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman will produce the project through Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

    Ivan Atkinson will serve as the executive producer.

    Ritchie’s directorial credits include movies such as “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, “Snatch”, “RocknRolla” and two “Sherlock Holmes” movies, starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law.

    He most recently directed “The Gentlemen” with Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam and currently reuniting with Jason Statham for his next.

  • Hugh Grant in talks to star in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming spy thriller

    By Express News Service
    Hugh Grant is in negotiations to star in filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s upcoming film with Jason Statham in the lead. If everything falls in place, the project, which was earlier titled Five Eyes, will mark a reunion between Ritchie and Grant after they worked together on The Gentlemen (2019).

    Statham will star as an MI6 guns-and-steel agent who is recruited by global intelligence alliance ‘Five Eyes’ to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology that threatens to disrupt the world order.

    Reluctantly paired with CIA high-tech expert, he sets off on a globe-trotting mission where he will have to use all of his charm, ingenuity and stealth to track down and infiltrate a billionaire arms broker.

    The cast also includes Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett and Cary Elwes. Miramax will finance the project and produce with STXfilms. Ritchie will direct the film from a screenplay written by Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies.

  • Hugh Grant in talks to join Guy Ritchie’s new movie

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: British star Hugh Grant is in negotiations to board filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s next, starring Jason Statham in the lead.

    If finalised, the movie, which was earlier titled “Five Eyes”, will mark a reunion between Ritchie and Grant after they worked together on 2019 movie “The Gentlemen”.

    As per Deadline, Ritchie will direct the new project from a screenplay by Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies.

    Statham will star as a MI6 guns-and-steel agent who is recruited by global intelligence alliance ‘Five Eyes’ to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology that threatens to disrupt the world order.

    Reluctantly paired with CIA high-tech expert, he sets off on a globe-trotting mission where he will have to use all of his charm, ingenuity and stealth to track down and infiltrate billionaire arms broker.

    The cast also includes Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett and Cary Elwes.

    Miramax will finance the project and produce with STXfilms.

    Grant, known for movies such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually”, recently starred in HBO series “The Undoing” opposite Nicole Kidman.

  • Cary Elwes joins Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham’s Five Eyes

    By Express News Service
    English actor Cary Elwes has joined the cast of filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s next Five Eyes, starring Jason Statham in the lead. The movie marks a reunion between Ritchie and Statham, who started their movie careers together with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998.The duo also worked on Snatch (2000) and the upcoming thriller Cash Truck.

    As per reports, Ritchie will direct Five Eyes from a screenplay by Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. Statham will star as a MI6 guns-and-steel agent who is recruited by global intelligence alliance Five Eyes to track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology that threatens to disrupt the world order.

    Reluctantly paired with CIA high-tech expert, he sets off on a globe-trotting mission where he will have to use all of his charm, ingenuity and stealth to track down and infiltrate a billionaire arms broker.

    Elwes, who most recently starred in Stranger Things and Marvellous Mrs Maisel, will portray Nathan Jasmine, the overseer of Statham’s mission. Five Eyes will also feature Aubrey Plaza. Miramax will finance the project and produce with STXfilms.