Director Robert Schwentke Updates R.I.P.D.
Posted 10.04.10 by Ryan
Director Robert Schwentke seems like the perfect choice to direct the action/comedy R.I.P.D. — based on the Dark Horse comic book — considering Schwentke's latest directorial effort is the action/comedy comic book adaptation RED. Actor Ryan Reynolds has been attached to the project R.I.P.D. or Deadpool.
Appearing similarly busy, Schwentke told Collider that R.I.P.D. was "one of 3-4 projects that I’m pursuing."
I’m very, very excited by [R.I.P.D.] because I also think that it’s a very special project again that has a lot of elements that I really respond to sort of at a molecular level. I feel like it’s going to give me the ability to mix those together for the first time. It’s got some buddy cop stuff in it and it has some romance in it. It has some action-comedy in it again... We are in the midst of re-writing it.
Schwentke admitted that "ideally" shooting R.I.P.D. next "would be terrific," but he is also attached to an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel The Osterman Weekend, which Sam Peckinpah directed a version of in 1983. For those unfamiliar with the property, Schwentke explained the plot of The Osterman Weekend.
It’s about a group of life-long friends who meet for their annual Osterman Weekend. And as the weekend progresses sort of old fissures and old issues flare up between the old friends. You start to realize that nothing is as it seems. That there’s actually a spy game a foot and there’s a spy component. It’s a Robert Ludlum book that it’s based on, so there would be a conspiratorial element. So it’s really about the characters and sort of the spy genre shot through a character prism, if you will. Which is intensely interesting to me because it reveals so much about humanity and it reveals so much about interrelations.
Schwentke says he is attached to both R.I.P.D. and The Osterman Weekend, though the script for the latter has yet to be delivered. Outside of Reynolds, Schwentke says they have not cast anyone else for R.I.P.D. — likely because Reynolds' availability has been called into question — admitting that R.I.P.D. is still in its preliminary stages. Either way, Schwentke won't be hurting for work.