The past few years have seen Joel Edgerton firmly landing on the Hollywood radar, with a terrific turn in the Australian film Animal Kingdom two years ago, for which Jacki Weaver earned an Oscar nomination, and an exceptional performance opposite Tom Hardy in Warrior last year, which itself has garnered some Oscar buzz.
Just last week, we heard the great news that Edgerton, who’s also a writer and has two shorts to his directing credits too, had sold his script One Night Stand to New Regency. Speaking to the actor-writer-director, The Playlist have some excellent updates on the project he’s just sold, as well as another he plans to make in Australia this year.
With One Night Stand, Edgerton will be executive producing the project but not starring in it, and he describes it as a kind of tribute to a writer-director that we love at HeyUGuys, John Hughes, whose films really have had such a significant impact on generations of filmgoers, best known for the likes of The Breakfast Club, Home Alone, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and so many more brilliant films.
“It’s literally a movie set in one day and evening and the following day after a one night stand. [It’s] about two very damaged people who happen to find each other for all the right and the wrong reasons, and it’s kind of a love story in a way, but it’s not shellac-ed with schmaltz…it’s a comedy,” Edgerton explained. “I wanted to make a movie that was kind of a tribute to the way I feel when I watch a John Hughes movie. Or Jason Reitman is the latest kind of guy [with that sensibility]. You can laugh throughout, but at the end of the movie you’re also left with some resonance of human feeling, some empathy, some kind of pathos.”
That sounds perfect to me. The prospect of the film unfolding across a day and a half, following the events and consequences of a one-night stand, definitely has me interested. And along with that, Edgerton also talked about another script that he’s written that he hopes to make back in his home country, Australia.
“I wrote a movie which we want to make in Australia…It’s a crime drama that’s kind of ‘Rashomon‘ style, but it’s set within the police force, and we’ll hopefully make that this year.”
Along with One Night Stand, this has me so interested too, suggesting quite a depth from Edgerton as a writer, likening it to the 1950 Oscar-nominated film by the critically acclaimed Japanese writer-director, Akira Kurosawa, often heralded as one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history, and certainly one of the best known filmmakers coming out of Asia.
Edgerton will soon be diversifying his acting career too, starring opposite Jennifer Garner in the family film, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, due out at the end of the summer. The end of the year will then see him starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby adaptation, as well as in Kathryn Bigelow’s as-yet-untitled film following the hunt for Osama bin Laden, with Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, and Édgar Ramirez also in talks to star.
And as if that wasn’t a busy slate enough, he’s also currently at Sundance promoting his latest Australian film, Wish You Were Here, and you can read our review of the film here. Clearly, Edgerton is going to be a very busy man in the coming years, and he’s going to be someone to keep a close eye on in what will hopefully be a trajectory to even more recognition. He’s a talented man, and I can’t wait to hear more about his upcoming projects. More news as we get it.
