With his Dune dreams now behind him for now, Pierre Morel is returning to a more familiar wheelhouse, jumping on to produce high-speed, all-action thriller Overdrive, with Matthew Goode and Alex Pettyfer in talks to star.
As you might suspect from the title, Overdrive is not a quiet romantic comedy about lazy days on a slow-moving canal boat. Nope, it’s about two brothers (presumably Goode and Pettyfer, if they lock in deals) who enjoy the danger and romance of being high-profile car thieves (think Gone in 60 Seconds without Nic Cage’s silly hair). But when the pair journeys to the South of France in search of new wheels to steal, they run afoul of a crime boss.
Though Morel won’t direct this one – that job falls to Colombian Antonio Negret, who made the upcoming Transit for Joel Silver – the man who brought us Taken and From Paris with Love will be on hand to offer his advice while acting as action and art supervisor (our prediction: he’ll mostly ask for more explosions.)
The script is from Wanted duo Derek Haas and Michael Brandt, and it’s not really a surprise as to why Morel decided to make it his first crack at producing. “I've been looking a long time for the right project to make my producing debut,” he tells Variety. “When I read Derek and Michael's script, I knew this was the perfect vehicle, in which I could input all the experience I had gathered over the years." ‘Perfect vehicle.’ See what he did there, eh?