In February, I reported that Nicolas Winding Refn’s next film was supposed to start production this coming September in Korea. No other details about plot or cast were revealed.
Well, that project seems to definitely be happening. After much chatter and rumors, a Production Weekly listing has Refn shooting his long-gestating “The Avenging Silence” in September.
In August 2016, Refn announced on social media that his next project would be titled “The Avenging Silence”, calling it "Ian Fleming + William Burroughs + NWR = The Avenging Silence" and posted images for Fleming's novel “Dr. No” and for Burroughs's novel “The Soft Machine”.
The film, written by Robert Wade and Neal Purvis, is said to follow a former European spy who accepts a mission from a Japanese businessman to take down the head of a Yakuza boss in Japan.
This is set to be Refn’s first film in over 8 years, he last gave us 2016’s polarizing “The Neon Demon,” a body-horror film starring Elle Fanning. The Cannes premiere was famously, or infamously, met with both jeers and cheers.
Last September, during a masterclass at Venice, Refn (“Drive,” “Only God Forgives”) mentioned that he was working on a new film, and that it would be coming soon, he then went on to lambast Hollywood as a “system that’s falling apart.”
These last few years, Refn’s been mostly dabbling in TV shows like “Copenhagen Cowboy” for Netflix, the Amazon series “Too Old to Die Young” and producing BBC’s “The Famous Five.”