First Look at Charlie Hunnam & Rami Malek In ‘Papillon’

First Look at Charlie Hunnam & Rami Malek In ‘Papillon’

Remaking a classic like “Papillon” certainly doesn’t sound like the wisest idea on paper. The iconic 1973 film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman is all-timer, which makes you wonder at the hubris of trying to create lightning in a bottle twice. But we’ll find out at the Toronto International Film Festival is this redo is folly or not.

Charlie Hunnam and “Mr. Robot” star Rami Malek take the lead roles in this version, which has a script from “Prisoners” writer Aaron Guzikowski, and Danish director Michael Noer (“R“) behind the camera. Apparently, this will be a contemporary take on the based-on-a-true-story thriller about a man unjustly convicted of murder who enlists the help of a counterfeiter to break him out of a South American jail. Hunnam will be taking the McQueen role, with Malek in Hoffman’s shoes.

TIFF runs from September 7-17.

Source: theplaylist.com

Netflix ‘Triple Frontier’ Eyes August Start; Mark Wahlberg, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal In Talks

EXCLUSIVE: The JC Chandor-directed thriller Triple Frontier has regained its footing at Netflix for a potential August production start. Mark Wahlberg is now in talks to replace Ben Affleck, who dropped out last week. The film will shoot in Hawaii and Colombia and will star Sons of Anarchy‘s Charlie Hunnam, Mudbound‘s Garrett Hedlund and Pedro Pascal, coming off Game of Thrones and Narcos. Wahlberg is coming off Transformers: The Last Knight. Still in the mix is Adria Arjona, who has been attached right along.

This last–minute activity is just part and parcel of the resilience this film has shown. Triple Frontier was a go at Paramount but hit the rocks when lead actors Tom Hardy and Channing Tatum dropped out over creative differences, weeks before the start of production. That, a $70 million price tag and the fact the studio was going through a regime change with the exit of the late Brad Grey (who championed the project), prompted Paramount to put the film into turnaround. Deadline revealed this implosion on April 12, and then on May 1 revealed that Netflix was pursuing the picture along with other suitors, with Affleck and his Oscar-winning brother Casey courted. The elder Affleck was ready to go but decided to take a break to focus on his health and family. Incoming Netflix feature film head Atlas producers Charles Roven and Alex Gartner kept the fires stoked, and now they have pulled off a rarity: saving a project that seemed in grave danger of flatlining.

Scott Stuber has been tasked with assembling a star-driven slate that could reach 40-50 annual films in total, and Triple Frontier gets added to a growing film roster that recently included the deal that reteams Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo for an untitled film set in the art world, and Highwaymen, the John Lee Hancock-directed film put in turnaround at Universal about the Texas Rangers who hunted down and killed bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, with Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson starring.

Originally written by Mark Boal with a rewrite by Chandor, Triple Frontier is a thriller set in the notorious border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where the Iguazu and Parana rivers converge. This is a film that Katherine Bigelow once planned to direct, and which at one time Tom Hanks and Will Smith and Johnny Depp circled, so it has always had its fans.

Source: deadline.com

Charlie Visits The Graham Norton Show

Charlie Visits The Graham Norton Show

Charlie and director Guy Ritchie stopped by The Graham Norton Show on May 12th to promote their film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and more. You can check out the video below in case you missed it.

Screen captures to be posted soon!


NY Times: Charlie Hunnam: Pushy When It Counts (Picky, Too)

NY Times: Charlie Hunnam: Pushy When It Counts (Picky, Too)

Neither director wanted him, but then they took a look at him, and then he opened his mouth.

He was hungry, and pushy, and the director Guy Ritchie liked that. He was gorgeous, and charmed women and children, and the director James Gray liked that, too.

Charlie Hunnam is not exactly a household name in the United States, at least not just yet.

He is known in some quarters as the guy who backed out of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” He is known in others as the conflicted capo of a California motorcycle gang in the FX series “Sons of Anarchy.” Four years ago, he starred in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim,” and a decade before that played a menacing albino Confederate in Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain.” Across the pond, in his native England, he rose to fame as a teen, playing a coltish gay youngster in the breakout series “Queer as Folk.”

But all those parts did not make a breakout star of Mr. Hunnam, 37, not least because he has been enormously picky about roles. He once spent a few lean years living off an organic marijuana crop he cultivated in his Los Angeles home, he said, rather than taking jobs that left him cold.

“I can’t even believe I’m being this candid,” Mr. Hunnam said as he revealed his pot-growing days — they’re behind him now, he swears — over a lunch of seared halibut and spring peas at the Four Seasons in Lower Manhattan a few weeks ago.

Tall and V-shaped, blond and chiseled, Mr. Hunnam has been likened to Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum. Yet he didn’t carry the “here we go again” ennui or whiff of wariness that often permeates the air around celebrities. This despite the fact that he was in the thick of the press tour for “King Arthur,” the $102 million film Mr. Ritchie directed and helped write, in theaters Friday, May 12, with Mr. Hunnam as its star.

Scant weeks before, he had been out promoting Mr. Gray’s “The Lost City of Z,” which he starred in, too. By every appearance, the lean years are no more. Yet both films nearly eluded him.

Mr. Ritchie flatly refused to consider Mr. Hunnam for Arthur at first, not least because he envisioned a king with an action-figure physique. “There’s more fat in a chip than there is on Charlie,” Mr. Ritchie said in an interview. “I just didn’t think he was robust enough.”

Infuriated, Mr. Hunnam flew to London from Los Angeles to force a meeting that Mr. Ritchie couldn’t say no to because Mr. Hunnam’s manager is his close friend. Looking back, Mr. Hunnam said he was not sure how much he wanted the role; he just wanted to be seen. Yet within five minutes, Mr. Ritchie said, “I knew I loved him.”

The director continued, “When someone’s hungry and pushy and they can back it up with something, then it’s a wonderful conspiracy.” Mr. Hunnam was smart, meticulous and dived deep. He also hit the gym like a madman and, soon enough, looked like He-Man.

This in turn dismayed Mr. Gray, when, eight days after wrapping “King Arthur,” Mr. Hunnam showed up for a costume fitting for “Z.” The film is about Percy Fawcett, a real-life British explorer who disappeared in the Amazon in 1925 while searching for signs of an ancient civilization.

Mr. Hunnam recalled that the “Z” director “looked in abject horror at my body and said, ‘This is a disaster, this is nowhere close to the physicality that we need for Fawcett.’” Mr. Hunnam added: “I just looked like a superhero, you know? Stupid.”

All of which he managed to blame on Mr. Pitt. When he took his shirt off in “Fight Club” and “Snatch,” Mr. Hunnam said, he created “a new expectation of what a man should be.”

That said, Mr. Pitt was the one who got Mr. Hunnam the part of Fawcett. Mr. Pitt’s production company, Plan B, had tapped Mr. Gray, whose previous films include “The Yards” and “We Own the Night,” to write and direct the picture.

Mr. Pitt was to star but dropped out because of scheduling conflicts; then the lead was to be Benedict Cumberbatch, but his wife was about to give birth. Plan B suggested Mr. Hunnam, at which point Mr. Gray balked.

“I thought he was a Hells Angels kind of guy, which makes me feel like an absolute fool beyond comprehension,” Mr. Gray said, in a phone chat.

After learning Mr. Hunnam was British, Mr. Gray invited him over for dinner, making spaghetti and meatballs, which Mr. Hunnam dutifully ate even though, as Mr. Gray later learned, he avoids carbs.

“He was so warm and funny. My wife thought he was handsomest man in the world, and my son was obsessed with him,” Mr. Gray said. “‘Lost City of Z’ is all about feelings of inadequacy about class. He understood all that stuff, and spoke to it directly.”

For Mr. Gray, that was key. Like his character in the film, Mr. Hunnam burned with the need to prove himself. Continue reading NY Times: Charlie Hunnam: Pushy When It Counts (Picky, Too)