Netflix‘s quest to become the go-to destination for the biggest stars in the industry shows no signs of slowing down, and having recently tapped the Russo brothers to direct Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling in $200 million espionage blockbuster The Gray Man, the streaming giant has now signed up another two A-listers for one of their projects.
Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts are set to headline Leave The World Behind, the big screen adaptation of a novel that hasn’t even been released yet, which is set to be written and directed by Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail. Netflix are said to have shelled out big money to secure the rights to the source material, too, beating out almost every other major studio in Hollywood.
The movie is set during a city-wide blackout, with Roberts playing the mother of a family vacationing in a home owned by Washington’s character, who shows up with his own clan to escape the city. The story is set to be a very timely one that heavily involves issues of race and class, but there also appears to be a mystery element with the lack of technology available leading to confusion and chaos as things start to spiral out of control.
Esmail and Roberts already have plenty of history, having worked closely on the first season of Amazon’s Homecoming, with the former acting as the co-creator, executive producer and director and the latter playing the lead role. Washington and Roberts have reportedly been looking to co-star together for a while now, too, and Leave The World Behind will mark their first collaboration since 1993’s John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief.
The two leads are very selective about the movies that they sign on to, so there must be something pretty special about Leave The World Behind that convinced them to tackle the literary adaptation, in what will mark the Netflix debut of both Academy Award winners.
Published: Jul 21, 2020 08:04 am