The development pipeline has looked like a bit of a sewer lately, making it all the more important to point out the brilliant (or at least potentially brilliant) concepts that happen to flow among the crap. To wit: God has answered your prayers for an action-thriller teaming Jason Statham, Clive Owen... and Robert De Niro.
You were praying for this, right? Probably in between wishes for someone to please finally get Abel Ferrara's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde project or that Russell Crowe/Beyonce Knowles remake of A Star is Born off the ground? Alas, you'll be waiting a while for those, but the De Niro/Statham/Owen trifecta will pay off gloriously in the interim: The trio will hit beautiful Melbourne (another plus), where production on The Killer Elite is already underway. And it gets even more testoterrific: It's based on great English adventurer and tough-guy Sir Ranulph Fiennes's 1993 novel The Feather Men, which "follows a group of black-ops agents for hire, who must hunt down and destroy a rouge cell of assassins." De Niro will play Statham's black-ops mentor, whom Statham must rescue when he's kidnapped by Owen's team.
"De Niro in distress" is maybe not the most macho thing I've ever heard, but the prospect for him to have scenes with both Owen and Statham -- who, despite playing yet another mercenary, is branching out a bit dramatically with this and his upcoming art-house thriller Safe -- provides for some kind of Y-chromosome nirvana. Right? Anyway, just a little something to brighten your Monday. It's all downhill from here, sorry.
ยท Robert De Niro's Killer role [Variety]