If Kathryn Bigelow established her early career on genre flicks like “Blue Steel,” “Point Break,” and “Strange Days,” her pivot in the latter stages toward socially and politically relevant work has been fascinating. It also helps that the movies have been really, really good too. Of course, the Oscar winning “The Hurt Locker” marks the first part of this shift, with the followup “Zero Dark Thirty” confirming Bigelow’s desire to tackle stories capturing the current climate. And so it goes with her next film, which is starting to cast up and getting ready to roll in front of cameras.
Will Poulter (“The Revenant“), Ben O’Toole (“The Water Diviner,” “Hacksaw Ridge“), and Jack Reynor (“Sing Street,” “Macbeth,” “Transformers: Age Of Extinction“) have joined John Boyega in Bigelow’s untitled crime drama set against the backdrop of Detroit’s devastating riots that took place over five haunting summer days in 1967. The film will explore systemic racism in urban Detroit, and given the Black Lives Matter movement and current conversation around race relations in the United States, the material will be as potent as ever.
There’s no studio attached at the moment, but there’s no doubt this is one that will see more than a few players trying to land it. The film, financed by Annapurna Pictures, is aiming for a 2017 release, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the riots.