Need For Speed Director Just Got A Huge Budget To Make This Crazy Sci-Fi Movie
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Need for Speed isn’t much of a movie, but the car chase scenes are actually badass and exciting, and director Scott Waugh definitely showed that he can handle his business when it comes to action. For his next trick, the former stuntman and stunt coordinator, is tackling an ambitious sci-fi project called Inversion.
With a reported budget of $120 million, this is going to be a huge step up for Waugh, who is most known for co-directing the Navy SEAL actioner Act of Valor, which starred actual active duty Navy SEALS. Foresight Unlimited, the company behind the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Lone Survivor and the surprisingly awesome 2 Guns, is producing, and if they’re going to invest this much in a picture, they better have a great deal of confidence.
Here’s the official synopsis for Inversion:
The film follows two unlikely heroes, a young Chinese scientist and a street smart American expat, on a frenzied journey across the globe to save Earth from an apocalyptic threat—a total reversal of gravity that causes whole cities and civilizations to uproot and plummet into the sky.
That sounds both ridiculous but totally fun at the same time, like schlocky, concept-driven sci-fi, only with the funds to back it up. It’s easy to imagine Waugh, with his extensive background in stunt work—both as a participant as well as staging—having a lot of fun working with what he’ll have here. You can bet there will be tons of practical effects in play, and Waugh has to feel like a kid in a candy store just thinking about it.
The other people involved in Inversion are kind of a weird mix. Waugh is going to work from a script co-written by the Oscar-nominated David Arata (Children of Men), and Bragi Schut, who wrote the crazy ass Nicholas Cage-starring Season of the Witch (a movie I’m not ashamed to admit is an absolute blast of insane). One of these components adds a bit of class and prestige to the proceedings, the other does not. I’ll let you decide which is which. Foresight has also tapped Michael Nozik (Syriana), Markus Barmettler (Conviction), and Philip Lee (Cloud Atlas, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to produce. Like I said, it’s an interesting mix, and you have to be curious to see how this all comes together.
There’s no word on casting or anything like that, but it probably won’t be too terribly long before we start hearing about that side of things, as they have their eye on an April 2015 start date.
