It looks like Denis Villeneuve’s HBO mini-series “The Son,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is dead in the water. That’s what the filmmaker told Norwegian outlet VG.
I love the project. And I love the book and the author. He is very talented. The script for the adaptation is also excellent, but I feel it is beyond my capabilities to tackle this one at the moment.
Villeneuve adds that he hopes the series, which was greenlit in 2016, does get made “by someone else.” Gyllenhaal would also not be involved at this point in time.
The series is based on a book by famed Norwegian author Jo Nesbo. Last July, Villeneuve and his team were actually scouting locations to shoot in Oslo, including the inside of a prison.
The strikes seemed to have put a damper on Villeneuve’s plans to shoot it, but it also doesn’t help that Villeneuve currently has three other projects in the works, “Cleopatra,” “Rendezvous With Rama” and “Dune: Messiah.”
Gyllenhaal, who is no longer involved in the series, would have starred in the role of Lofthus, an escaped convict and opioid addict on the run from the law who can’t recall his past.
The novel has been billed as “a tale of vengeance set amid Oslo’s brutal hierarchy of corruption.” This would have been Gyllenhaal and Villeneuve’s third project together, after 2013’s double bill of “Prisoners” and “Enemy.”