Jake Gyllenhaal is going another round with his Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua. Gyllenhaal is starring in a remake of the phenomenal Danish thriller, The Guilty, which Fuqua has just signed on to direct. Filming is set to begin this November under COVID-19 restrictions.
Deadline reports that Gyllenhaal and Fuqua are set to reunite, five years after the star and director first worked together in 2015’s boxing drama Southpaw, with the one-location thriller The Guilty. The film is a remake of the Danish thriller of the same name directed by Gustav Moller, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews and Oscar buzz. Here is the logline, per Deadline:
It takes place over the course of a single morning in a 911 dispatch call center. Call operator Joe Bayler (Gyllenhaal) tries to save a caller in grave danger—but he soon discovers that nothing is as it seems, and facing the truth is the only way out.
The original Danish film is a taut, claustrophobic thriller that featured a sturdy performance by Jakob Cedergren as a bored emergency dispatcher who one day gets a coded phone call from a woman who he realizes has been abducted. It’s a razor sharp, tensely plotted film that manages to make an exciting thriller out of its single location. Which is why the remake is kind of the perfect film to make amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has made it difficult for productions to shoot on location with big crews. The Guilty will probably require one set and a small crew, which is likely why the film is shooting this November in Los Angeles “following rigorous sanitation and safety protocols” and under COVID-19 insurance.
Fuqua will be shooting The Guilty before he tackles his Will Smith runaway slave drama Emancipation, which was sold to Apple TV+ in a huge deal at the the Virtual Cannes film festival. Gyllenhaal has been attached to the remake for roughly year now, and likely got Fuqua the job — having shown an affinity for reuniting with filmmakers, like Enemy‘s Denis Villeneuve and Nightcrawler‘s Dan Gilroy, who let him chew on some meaty character roles. While Southpaw wasn’t a great critical success, it was a great showcase for Gyllenhaal and Gyllenhaal’s abs. I loved the original Danish thriller and am not stoked about Fuqua being at the helm, but I think Gyllenhaal would absolutely nail the role and carry the entire film.
“I couldn’t be more excited to work with Antoine again,” Gyllenhaal said in a statement. “Our time together on Southpaw was one of the great artistic experiences of my career, and I cannot wait to be back on set with him again. The Guilty is a special story, and one that we all feel very close to.”
True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto is writing the script for The Guilty, which is being produced by Gyllenhaal and his Nine Stories partner Riva Marker, along with Fuqua through his Fuqua Films, Scott Greenberg, Michel Litvak, Gary Michael Walters, David Litvak and Svetlana Metkina for Bold Films and Amet’s David Haring. Annie Marter, Gustav Moller and Lina Flint will be executive producers with Christian Mercuri.
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