On the surface, you may be hard-pressed to see how a 10-episode Amazon streaming series about a crooked cop and the seedy criminal underbelly might be related to Donald Trump and his rise to the presidency. However, for writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn, the controversial 2016 election helped shape his upcoming series “Too Old to Die Young.”
Speaking at Cannes (via Variety), where the filmmaker showed two episodes of his TV series, Refn talked about the future of the industry (as he’s wont to do), as well as how “Too Old to Die Young” is a direct reflection of the current political times.
But first, all this talk about “Too Old to Die Young” being a TV series is rubbish, says the filmmaker. His Amazon series isn’t a TV series, at all.
“This is a movie,” Refn said. “It’s a 13-hour movie. It’s not TV! TV is like reality shows and news channels. This is the future, which is streaming.”
But now that’s out of the way, the director would go on to say that the 2016 election was happening as he was developing his series. And as he saw the political climate change, the scripts changed along with them.
“When we moved to LA to start preparing the show, the election was going on,” Refn said. “I was very affected as a foreigner coming from Copenhagen, which is the safest, most liberal town in the entire galaxy. I was like an alien stranded in a strange land for the first time in the U.S.”
And so, for Refn, he feels like “Too Old to Die Young” is actually a series (err, “13-hour movie”) with a pretty overt political message.
“The whole idea is to create a show, where women were the hope and all the men were demolished,” he said.
“Too Old to Die Young” premieres on Amazon on June 14.