Ryan Gosling has proven himself the go-to man for… well, any film with “man” in the title. The Wolfman, The Gray Man and an untitled Stuntman project. Maybe someone should give him a CGI role in the next Marvel film for a bit of variation. Then again, he probably won’t even have time for that, because I haven’t even mentioned that he’s also signed on for Project Hail Mary and The Memory Police.
Anyone else feel tired just reading through his schedule?
They’re all projects helmed by some of the biggest and best in the industry. Leigh Whannell must’ve been on the hunt for Gosling to star in The Wolfman, his follow-up film to the incredible success of The Invisible Man earlier this year. Whannell will be combining the 1941 classic with his own ideas to form the treatment.
Next up, The Gray Man, has a pretty non-grey cast list attached already. Starring alongside Captain America himself, Chris Evans, Gosling will be directed by Marvel legends Anthony and Joe Russo in the espionage story. It’s also the biggest budget Netflix have commissioned to date, so think a James Bond-style budget and er, quite possibly, a James Bond-style plot. Based on a bestselling series of books, it’s already expected that Gosling will hold the Gray Man mantle for more films to come.
Coming from the stuntman background himself, it seems only right David Leitch to make a film about it: so along comes the untitled stuntman movie. Having previously directed Deadpool 2 back in 2018, Leitch has already proved that he can direct action sequences, never-mind star in them. And given that he worked alongside Chad Stahelski on John Wick, we might even get to see Gosling find some inventive ways to kill people. Maybe that piano from La La Land could come in handy.
For his fourth film, Gosling is heading back into space after the success of First Man with Phil Lord and Chris Miller (2014’s The Lego Movie) in Project Hail Mary. Based on Andy Weir’s novel Hail Mary, Gosling is set to play an astronaut who wakes up finding himself alone, millions of miles away from home and absolutely no recollection about what happened. In short, everything is very much not awesome for his character – but fingers crossed the film will be.
After he baffled us all with I’m Thinking of Ending Things on Netflix only a few weeks ago, Charlie Kaufman is thinking of starting new things now, one being an adaptation of The Memory Police for Gosling’s production company. Based on Yōko Ogawa’s 1994 book, it’s been described as a “script about dreams.” I doubt we’ll be forgetting it, or Ryan Gosling, any time soon.
Words by Harriet Metcalfe
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