Lately, Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has been churning out features. Last fall, he released the crime-thriller Prisoners. Then February brought its follow-up, the mystery movie Enemy. Now, he's already looking ahead to his next venture Sicario, and is eying Emily Blunt to headline it.
Variety reports Blunt has entered into negotiations about fronting Sicario, a thriller penned by Taylor Sheridan that follows a Tucson, Arizona-based police officer to the Mexican border on a quest to track down a dangerous drug lord. Joining the cop in this dangerous road trip are a pair of mercenaries. It's a slight description, and one that leaves us with only a vague idea as to which role Blunt might play.
As there is no indication of the gender of the four characters, Blunt could be up for any of the above, though something tells me she might not be super convincing if the drug lord is meant to be a Mexican drug lord. Given that Variety is saying Blunt will star in the feature, it's possible she's up to play the lead cop part. Let's hope so. It'd be a real downer to find out she's some sidekick girlfriend/love interest. She's done that enough. Give her a gun, and let her loose on the hero role.
The title Sicario is a curious one, and a quick Google search led me to a compelling non-fiction book edited by Molly Molloy and Charles Bowden called El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin. Here's a brief exerpt from its online synopsis:
"El Sicario is the hidden face of America's war on drugs. He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels….He is the truth no one wants to hear."
It should be noted that there is no mention of this memoir in the Variety piece, and "sicario" actually meansis "hitman" in Spanish. But the vague logline seems to share some common ground with the above book, so maybe there is more than a coincidental connection. We'll hear more on Sicario as it nears its summer shoot date. Once it wraps, Villeneuve will leap to another project, the sci-fi feature Story of Your Life, which has Amy Adams in early talks and is looking to lens early next year.
Sicario will probably hit theaters in 2015. In the meantime, you can look for Blunt in the Tom Cruise actioner Edge of Tomorrow and the big Rob Marshall musical Into the Woods later this year.
