Shane Black’s ‘Cold Warrior’ Acquired By Netflix After Ten Years In Development
Ten years ago this month, we wrote about howShane Black, the wunderkind writer of films likeLethal WeaponandThe Long Kiss Goodnight, was preparing to direct an action thriller calledCold Warrior. This was just after he directedKiss Kiss Bang Bangbut before the box office successIron Man 3, so although he was a legendary screenwriter, he seemingly didn’t have enough juice back then to pushCold Warriorto the starting block.
But a decade later, with his new take onThe Predatorabout to hit theaters, Black seems poised to finally get his long-gestating movie made at Netflix.
Colliderreports that after being at development at Universal Pictures for almost ten years,Cold Warriorwas quietly acquired by Netflix late last year. Apparently that acquisition slipped through the cracks and was never reported.
The film’s story follows a Cold War spy who emerges from retirement and teams up with a younger agent to tackle a terrorist threat from Russia. That’s a pretty threadbare description, but much of Black’s storytelling genius comes from his memorable characters and snappy dialogue, so it’ll be interesting to see if he ended up rewriting screenwriterChuck Mondry’s original draft of the script.
Mel Gibsonwas in negotiationsto play the lead role back in 2010, and we can only hope that Black will look elsewhere to fill that part in 2018. If he can’t get a sequel to his 1970s detective comedyThe Nice Guysoff the ground, maybe Black can just hire Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling to play the two leads here, too. I’d love to see those two pair up on the big screen again.
There’s no word yet about whetherCold Warriorwill be Black’s follow-up toThe Predator, his super-sized sci-fi sequel that’s headed to theaters onSeptember 14, 2018, but one might imagine that Black would want to strike while the proverbial iron is hot. Netflix is flush with cash right now, but that’s not going to last forever – every director with a passion project would be wise to come knocking on Netflix’s door and attempt to get it made in the next five years, because the industry is in a tumultuous time right now and who knows what the future will look like? Hopefully it’ll be full of new Shane Black movies.
