After the two collaborated on the acclaimed Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” director James Mangold and actor Timothée Chalamet are putting together their next project, a buzzy motocross heist picture called “High Side” that is being packaged for auction.
Deadline revealed the news, as Chernin Entertainment is involved and the gestating film is based on a tantalizing unpublished short story from Jaime Oliveira that could make for quite the gritty and thrilling crime project. As Chalamet would play a former motocross racer named Billy, who is recruited to commit a string of bank robberies with his estranged brother, with the FBI hot on their trail.
The outlet also included a synopsis of the short story:
Billy is a former MotoGP racer who is haunted by a career-ending crash and a family legacy of abandonment but is drawn back into the world of high-speed risks and extreme danger. His estranged brother, already being pursued by the FBI, recruits him for a series of bank robberies on superbikes. A gifted motocross rider, Billy walked away from the sport after a devastating accident, and he has been making do, caring for his addict father and the family garage. He’s blindsided when his estranged older brother Cole resurfaces — just after their father’s death — with a proposition: use Billy’s talents for something bigger: robbing banks. Cole assembles a mismatched crew, including a woman who becomes Billy’s lover, and they begin knocking over small-town desert banks with speed and precision. But as the stakes rise, Lennox, an FBI agent who has a complicated history with Cole, closes in as the crew preps its biggest score: a bank job timed with a big motorcycle parade.
Mangold is no stranger to covering crime and the racing world stories after things like the underrated thriller “Cop Land,” was once developing the Don Winslow novel “The Force” with Matt Damon attached to star in the NYPD thriller at 20th Century Studios, and his acclaimed biopic “Ford v Ferrari” that explored the Ford company’s push into the world of competitive racing as they attempted to put Ferrari in the dust at Le Mans in 1966.
With “High Side” being put together, it could be further signals that Mangold’s stalled development on things like DC Studios‘ “Swamp Thing” reboot film and his mysterious “Star Wars” movie “Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi” (said to explore the origins of the Jedi 25,000 years in the past) would be placed on the back burner if not scrapped entirely or seeking new creatives to replace Mangold.
Chalamet is currently filming Denis Villeneuve‘s “Dune: Part 3” (based on the second Frank Herbert novel “Dune Messiah“) and has Josh Safdie‘s period sports adventure comedy “Marty Supreme” that’ll be released by A24 on December 25.
It is a bit unpredictable where “High Side” would land, but given the high-profile nature, we suspect that we’re looking at a major bidding war between traditional studios and streamers; an attractive package deal like this will get gobbled up quickly. So, we likely won’t have to wait too long to hear about an update.
