Sacha Gervasi, the director of “Anvil! The Story Of Anvil” has a lot cooking right now. ‘Anvil’ is hot in Hollywood right now, and the premiere in L.A. and word-of-mouth buzz brought out a ton of celebrity names including Dustin Hoffman (who apparently freaked out about how much he loved the film, “He called the other night!” Gervasi laughed with disbelief, “He’s bringing his whole fucking family!”), Ryan Gosling, members of Good Charlotte, Henry Rollins, Catherine Keener, Velvet Revolver’s Duff McKagen, Rooney, Lifehouse, WWE star Chris Jericho, Michel Gondry, Marc Forster, etc. (“The list goes on and on,” he elated.)
He already has a Hervé Villechaize biopic on tap that he’s set to write and direct and there’s potential much more down the road. Gervasi got his first major start in Hollywood by penning the script for Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal,” and he keeps banging out script after script that Hollywood is hot for.
The latest is a zany sounding rom-com with literary allusions, crime drama shades and a protagonist confronting same major life-altering issues. The film is called, “Henry’s Crime” and Keanu Reeves has already been cast as the lead (he actually hosted the ‘Anvil!’ premiere in London last year, and L.A. last week which probably tells you how much of a champion of the documentary he is. “I love this film. If you haven’t seen this, go… it’s inspiring; it’s just a really good film,” Keanu told the Press Association at the L.A. event).
“It’s a twisted, romantic comedy, very dark and funny and Keanu is the lead,” Gervasi told The Playlist.
“Keanu Reeves plays a Buffalo toll both attendant in the middle of an existential crisis,” he said and note: Gervasi talked about heist elements and a famous and tragic work by Russian playwright Anton Chekov that’s part of the whole deal. He actually laid it out all bare for us, but we’re sworn to secrecy for now.
The film is planning to shoot in the fall and is currently running down a list of directors (the Villechaize bio is next for Gervasi himself) . No one else is cast yet, but larger announcements will probably come out in the next few months. The director said that Keanu was actually on-board several months ago and actually became a fan of the ‘Anvil!’ documentary as he showed him elements in the editing room.
Go see “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” it’s expanding into cities and markets beyond New York, Toronto and L.A. this weekend.