Over the course of filmmaker Steven Soderbergh’s career, he’s had a number of films that have been big hits, as well as quite a few that seemingly flew under the radar and didn’t get the recognition they deserve. In that latter category sits the film “The Limey.” Thankfully, in honor of the film’s 20th anniversary, Soderbergh has gone back and given the film a proper 4K remaster.
And in honor of the trailer for the 4K remaster being released, he spoke to Deadline about the creation of “The Limey” and why it was one of the most terrifying experiences of his filmmaking career.
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“It was, for me, a really terrifying edit,” revealed Soderbergh. “It wasn’t written or shot to be put together the way it ended up being put together. The screening of the first cut, what we call our friends-and-family screening, was really upsetting because it was clear that that version was not working at all and that we would have to really reconceive the movie completely. Doing that involved some additional shooting and then, most importantly, rebuilding the movie from scratch, essentially, which Sara Flack, the editor, and I did over the course of several months.”
However, as we now know, all that hard work paid off, as “The Limey” became a critically-acclaimed film and one of Soderbergh’s more memorable works. And now, 20 years later, the film is getting a 4K remaster and release, proving that there’s still plenty of folks interested in “The Limey.” Soderbergh said that going back to revisit the film for the remaster was actually a completely different feeling than when he was working on it.
“It was a pleasant surprise. I was able to just watch it without being, you know, pulled back into that vortex of terror,” he explained. “I could just look at it and remember the good stuff, which was the shooting of it and working with that cast and being able to explore some editorial ideas that were kind of, well, I wouldn’t say leftover from ‘Out of Sight,’ but there were some ideas that I used in ‘The Limey’ that I had thought about using in ‘Out of Sight’ and just never got to implement. So it was ultimately, when we finished, a positive creative experience.”
Sadly, “The Limey” wasn’t the massive box office hit that Soderbergh and his cast and crew were hoping for. And because of that, his original idea for a sequel was never able to come to be. But thankfully, he’s willing to share that idea now, giving film fans a peek at how the story of “The Limey” would have continued.
“If it had been a hit, we might have done [a sequel],” Soderbergh said. “For [writer] Lem [Dobbs] and I, in our minds, the story very clearly to us was that [Terence Stamp’s character] had been in prison because he was betrayed by people he trusted. There’s a scene in a car when they’re driving up the coast and it’s teased there with basically the implication that his old gang betrayed him on the last job and that’s why he got sent away. The idea was he was going to deal with the situation with his murdered daughter in California and then go back to the UK and track those guys down and deal with them. That was going to be the sequel.”
Barring some incredibly surprising news, it would appear that the sequel is not ever going to happen and that the next best thing that fans of “The Limey” can do is buy the 4K remaster of the film or see it when it plays at select theaters, such as Film at Lincoln Center.
You can watch the trailer for the 4K remaster of “The Limey” below.
