The director of Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw, David Leitch, is working up a movie based on a high-concept script by Zak Olkewicz called Bullet Train. It is based on the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Isaka Kotaro and involves two snipers in a battle of skills and wits on the superfast Japanese inter-city train. It will come from Sony Pictures.
So who would you expect to be playing one of the lead roles? Certainly not the man who was just in James Gray’s sci-fi drama Ad Astra and about to make Babylon with Damien Chazelle.
Is this Brad Pitt’s return to action for the first time since World War Z? And before that Mr & Mrs Smith? Antoine Fuqua originally developed the project and retains a producers credit. A shooting schedule is still being worked out.
The 200 mph trains are world leaders for speed, comfort, punctuality and safety. The speed records will go even higher as the Japanese start to roll out a MagLev service in the coming years. The service has already been the subject of a movie, the wonderfully literally titled Japanese movie Shinkansen Big Explosion, also known as Super Express 109 which starred Ken Takakura, Sonny Chiba, and Ken Utsui.
Once again proving that Hollywood hasn’t had an original idea in it’s life, that movie involves a bomb on a bullet train that will detonate if the train ever goes below 80km/h.
