Wasting little time, the new production company FilmDistrict quickly added the action-thriller Drive, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, to its slate, reports Variety.
A few days prior to picking up this film, FilmDistrict had announced its collaboration with TriStar Pictures on the release of the Bethany Hamilton biopic Soul Surfer starring AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt.
Drive is a good pickup for Peter Schlessel and Bob Berney’s upstart company. Considering that Schlessel was the one who acquired District 9 when he was heading up Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions I like where this company is headed. He also had a role in Sony’s acquiring Soul Surfer as well.
With a focus on film properties that have a commercial appeal but with ensemble casts, Drive will be a good way to start. This new film by Nicolas Winding Refn is based on the James Sallis novel, and centers on a Hollywood stuntman (Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver in Los Angeles’ criminal underworld. Having fallen in love with a beautiful neighbor (Mulligan), he agrees to help her ex-con husband and becomes embroiled in a heist gone terribly wrong.
Besides Gosling and Mulligan, the cast also includes Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Albert Brooks, Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men). Hossein Amini penned the adapted script.
FilmDistrict is eyeing a fall 2011 for Drive.
