David Leitch and his incredible action team from his production company, 87North, are taking on the movie adaptation of the 80s TV series The Fall Guy, which stars just Ken himself, Ryan Gosling, and Emily Blunt. Leitch has carved out a nice little resume for himself with films including John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw and the recent Brad Pitt actioner, Bullet Train. Leitch’s history as a stuntman in movies that include the Matt Damon Bourne movies can be attributed to the Lee Majors show that is near and dear to his heart, and he is now directing Ryan Gosling in the titular role for the movie version. Check out the trailer in the embed above!
Vanity Fair has the exclusive first look of The Fall Guy, and the action director looks to be making more fun set pieces as Gosling’s Colt Seavers looks to be involved in many vehicular daredevil situations. The synopsis from Vanity Fair reads, “In this version, Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stuntman laid low by an on-set performance gone so wrong that it nearly killed him, while Emily Blunt is Jody Moreno, a former camera operator (and former love) getting her big break as the director of a ridiculously extravagant sci-fi Western that needs his help.”
The film is a perfect storm of Leitch bringing to life a beloved show of his younger days, plus making it a loving tribute to the stuntman trade that defines his career. This means he particularly felt the need to bring some real weight to the sequences by doing them with good ol’ fashioned stunt rigs as opposed to just doing it in front of a green screen then CGI-ing everything in later. “The consequences are real, a thousand percent,” Leitch says. “Obviously in modern cinema we have the use of CGI, and we use it liberally. But when we’re making a love letter to stunts and the blue-collar crews that make these movies come to life, we explored doing old-school high falls into airbags, and jumping a car as far as we could, and rolling a car as many times as we could.”
In addition, Leitch’s wife and producing partner, Kelly McCormick, states that the two have used the project as an opportunity to check off items on a stunt bucket list of their stunt team. McCormick explains, “We were fulfilling the dreams of stunt performers who got into the business to do that kind of stuff. They had goals and wanted to achieve big feats on camera. It’s what they wanted to do their whole lives—and we were able to do that.” Leitch and his team would take their enthusiasm for this project and wow the audience in an amazing live stage show at the presentation of the movie at CinemaCon earlier this year (which you can read about HERE).
What did you think of the The Fall Guy trailer? Let us know by leaving a comment below.