Over the last few days, Sydney Sweeney has been awkwardly fending off questions that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos wants her to be the Bond Girl in Denis Villeneuve’s James Bond movie. It’s curious timing, because today she’s attached to That Man from Rio, a remake of a 1964 movie that was itself a spoof of James Bond-style spy flicks.
Deadline reports Sweeney is set to star in Apple’s adventure comedy That Man from Rio, to be directed by Justin Lin, best known as the primary director of the Fast & Furious franchise. Chase Palmer (Naked Singularity) wrote the screenplay.
The original movie starred the great French New Wave actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and Françoise Dorléac, and centered on “a young private on military leave comes to the rescue of his girlfriend, who’s been abducted by thieves and brought to Rio de Janeiro.” The film was a major influence on romantic adventure comedies, such as Romancing the Stone and Indiana Jones. It drew major inspiration from The Adventures of Tintin and recreated a number of story points.
Sweeney is in the thick of the awards season discussion for her role as boxer Christy Martin in Christy (review), which opens next week. Lin recently made his return to indie filmmaking with the biopic Last Days (review), which we interviewed him about here. He should’ve told us about this, that sly bastard.
