Gerard Butler May Become The Raven In Adaptation Of Action-Packed Short Film
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If any of you readers want to get in touch with me to team up in creating a high-concept short film, let’s get it started. Making shorts and writing post-apocalyptic young adult fiction seem to be the surest ways to get a feature made nowadays. I’ll now remove my hyperbole hat and get on with this story.
Back in 2010, Universal acquired the rights to Ricardo de Montreuil’s sci-fi chase short The Raven, and once had Liam Hemsworth attached to star. But we’re in the future now, Hemsworth has moved on, and Gerard Butler is now in negotiations as the titular Raven, though that appears to just be a code name. Production company Gold Circle has stepped in to co-finance the feature, and de Montreuil will be directing it himself. The script was written by Michael Gilio (Kwik-Stop) based on the short’s story, which came from de Montreuil and Antonio Perez.
Butler will always be Leonidas from 300, and never any of the beyond-shitty romantic comedy roles he’s taken, so it’s refreshing to see him adding yet another action film to his slate. He was just in Antoine Fuqua’s White House thriller Olympus Has Fallen, and has the war drama Thunder Run and Hunter Killer as possible future projects.
If the full-length Raven follows the short film’s simplistic plot, Butler will play a man with some kind of telekenetic power (and wacky eyes) who is on the run in a future filled with big ED-209-looking robots and aerial drones flying all around the city. Not to mention the big-ass ship floating in mid-air. Dystopian? Maybe. Prescient? Absolutely. Check out the short below, only add 20 years to the actor in order to picture Butler better. Oh, and let’s all hope this film gets a name change. Nobody needs to think about John Cusack and Poe for this one.
