Having largely survived the trial by executive notes, critics and audiences that was making his first Hollywood film with the RoboCop remake, Jose Padilha is busy setting up potential new projects, albeit ones where he will have a little more control. He’s now picked Nekome, a post-World War II action pitch from John Hlavin, to potentially direct.
Padilha’s Cold Mountain company is working with producer Eric Newman to develop the film for StudioCanal. Hlavin, who wrote Underworld Awakening and has several unproduced scripts floating around different development pools, cooked up the idea, which takes its name from the Yiddish word for revenge. The setting is the days shortly after the conflict, with two young Holocaust survivors sent to Brazil to hunt down the Nazis who ran their concentration camp.
Given his experience working in his home country for the much-praised Elite Squad films, it’s not surprising to see Padilha back on familiar turf for this one. There’s no word on when it might shoot, however, and the director is already busy on a new, untitled drama for Netflix with Elite Squad’s Wagner Moura playing drug lord Pablo Escobar.