Ryan Reynolds And Director Tarsem May Team Up For Body-Switching Thriller Selfless

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

selflessRyan Reynolds isn’t someone who has had much to do with the science fiction genre, as his good looks and smarmy style lend themselves more to comedies and terrible horror flicks. Oh, what was that? You’re bringing up Green Lantern, seriously? Not even Ryan Reynolds wants to do that anymore. Just get out.

Reynolds is in talks to join the sci-fi thriller Selfless, co-produced by FilmDistrict and Endgame Entertainment, which were also both behind Rian Johnson’s Looper. Just as interesting as Reynolds’ involvement is director Tarsem Singh — or just Tarsem if you’re into that whole brevity thing — who is in negotiations to helm this strange flick.

Selfless was co-written by Spanish brothers Alex and David Pastor, whose first foray into American cinema was 2009’s subdued post-apocalyptic drama Carriers, which they co-wrote and co-directed. Their latest efforts include a Spanish sci-fi TV series called The Boat and the Spanish epidemic film Los últimos días.

The thriller’s plotline will focus on an old, wealthy man whose impending death influences his decision to get his mind transplanted into a younger man’s body. As it happens, the body is actually a recently murdered cadaver, and he can’t even try and get to the bottom of what happened before a team of killers begins hunting him down.

Tarsem, who is supposed to have a Marco Polo biopic somewhere in the pipeline, is the kind of visionary director who could really make this material pop visually. It’s unfortunate that his past films, such as Mirror Mirror, Immortals and The Cell all had shoddy screenplays, because they were all gorgeous films.

One of Reynolds’ last roles was in the body-switching comedy The Change-Up, but we’re hoping that this film is far more interesting than that one.