Earlier in the year, when Netflix announced its 2024 movie slate, Gareth Evans’ “Havoc,” shot in 2021, was again notably absent. It had many wondering, what exactly is going on with this film?
There’s been a lot of speculation about the reasons for the delays. Whatever the case may be, reshoots were completed this past July and Evans even went on social media at the time to confirm that the film was now set for “5-6 months” of post-production work. A release during the first quarter of 2025 was being eyed.
We now have our first look at “Havoc” (via Empire). Evans is telling Empire not to worry about the delays, the film was worth the wait, and that it especially came together during the reshoots.
“It’s had a profound effect on the film,” he tells the magazine of the extra shooting. “It allowed me to better streamline it, and make it what it was always intended to be, which is a blistering, fast-paced action-thriller with nods to the Hong Kong cinema that I grew up watching.”
“Havoc,” which wrapped production in October 2021, stars Tom Hardy, Forest Whitaker, Luis Guzman, and Timothy Olyphant. Evans is the filmmaker behind both ‘Raid’ films, 2018’s “Apostle” and the 2020 series “Gangs of London.” He’s well-known for his visceral and blood-soaked style of filmmaking.
Here’s the synopsis:
After a drug deal goes awry, a detective must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician's estranged son, while untangling his city's dark web of conspiracy and corruption.
In November 2022, Evans took to Instagram to confirm that he was “still plugging away at it, doing all we can to make the film the best it can be,” but that in order to produce the film to their standards, it would have to involve “a small amount of additional photography that we are hoping to shoot soon”.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.