Clive Owen seemed to have taken a break from movies. His last major production was Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man,” released in 2019. He also appeared in the Italian-produced 2020 film “Romantic Guide to Lost Places.”
Now comes news that Owen, 61, is set to star in Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi’s “Radioactive,” which will no doubt be a hot festival title given the past pedigree of its Ukrainian-born filmmaker.
Slaboshpytskyi stunned many, myself included, with his 2014 debut “The Tribe,” a crime drama set at a boarding school for deaf teenage students. It was widely acclaimed, but 12 years later, and with a handful of stalled projects, Slaboshpytskyi still hasn’t directed another feature.
This morning, I spoke to Slaboshpytskyi, who told me that “Radioactive” will tackle the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which has fascinated the filmmaker for decades and where he has repeatedly filmed over the years. As a young TV reporter and screenwriter in the ’90s, he made numerous trips into the Zone and later said he felt something “very special” and “mystical” about the place.
Having Owen attached to the project will surely help Slaboshpytskyi get things moving, or at least we hope so. The last 12 years have seen him struggle to get projects off the ground, including “Tiger” and “Luxembourg,” the former currently “on hold” and the latter, in his own words, “dead.”
As for Owen, after turning heads with “Croupier” (1999), many thought he had the potential to be the next Bond, and he would have been my pick at the time — a perfect fit. Still, he has built an impressively varied career, with notable credits including “Gosford Park,” “The Bourne Identity,” “Closer,” “Sin City,” “Inside Man,” and, of course, “Children of Men.”