If you're a serious film buff, you're a fan of Wild Bunch, the European financiers behind films like Enter The Void, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Holy Motors, Only God Forgives and a number of the most exciting, confrontational foreign films to reach American shores. They serve as backer for these and other arthouse sensations, while distributing some of the more exciting American pictures overseas. And at Cannes, Wild Bunch has prepared an incredibly exciting slate of diverse, unusual, and surprisingly commercial pitches. For example, are you ready for another Spring Breakers?
Leading the Wild Bunch Cannes slate is Spring Breakers: The Second Coming according to Screen Daily. The project is seeking funding, and will follow the Spring Breakers as they battle "an extreme militant Christian sect that attempts to convert them." "It's not a direct sequel, although there are allusions to some of the characters in the original," says Wild Bunch co-chief Vincent Maraval. They're not messing around here, getting a couple of heavyweights behind this project: Trainspotting writer Irvine Welsh is penning the script, with in-your-face music video auteur Jonas Akerlund behind the camera. If you've seen Akerlund's work, you'd know it's no surprise to see him helming the sequel to a Harmony Korine film. Here‘s a trailer for his debut, the nasty, Wild Bunch-backed Spun.
Wild Bunch is also bringing back Paul Verhoeven. The maniac genius behind Robocop, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers is adapting the novel Oh!, written by Philippe Djian and centered on the conflict between a businesswoman and her rapist stalker. Verhoeven's last completed big-screen movie was the superb Black Book all the way back in 2006, though in 2012 he completed an experimental short called Tricked, which was meant to utilize submitted screenplays from amateurs until Verhoeven hilariously dispensed with the idea and made it himself. Clearly he's been frustrated with an inability to make a new film, but Wild Bunch has finally answered the call to get him behind a camera once again.
Other major projects on the Wild Bunch slate include a remake of Maniac Cop, which is being produced by Nicolas Winding Refn and written, oddly enough, by comic book stalwart Ed Brubaker. A director for the redo will be announced at Cannes. Wild Bunch is also bringing us the new films from Gaspar Noe (Enter The Void) and Abdellatif Kechiche (Blue Is The Warmest Color). The former will be the English-language Love, about a romantic three-way relationship. Noe's claim is that it will give guys "a hard-on and make girls cry." Kechiche's The Real Wound, meanwhile, is also a bit ribald, centered on a French-Tunisian's boy and his attempts to lose his virginity while on holiday.
Wild Bunch has also acquired the Mel Gibson actioner Blood Father, while they handle the funding for Welcome To New York, Abel Ferrara's controversial film about Dominique Strauss-Kahn. It's a typically-fiery slate from the studio, sure to generate intense opinions: Maniac Cop alone will likely be flagged for indecent sex and violence. But a return to Spring Breakers? Without Franco? Seems a bit too risky. Re-consider this shit, Wild Bunch.
