Nicolas Winding Refn

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Fans of Nicolas Winding Refn, rejoice!

Nicolas Winding Refn has made it his business to change the world of film, or at least how the world of film is accessed through the internet.

Miles Teller may not have interest in concluding the Divergent franchise on the small screen, but that won’t stop Nicolas Winding Refn from luring him there. Teller will headline a new Amazon limited series from the Neon Demon director, becoming Too Old to Die Young.

Nicolas Winding Refn is moving forward on his crazy new spy movie The Avenging Silence, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any other projects in the works. Refn will be producing Maniac Cop, a remake of the 1988 cult classic directed by William Lustig, which starts shooting this year. Refn won’t be directing the new version — that honor goes to John Hyams, producer and director of Syfy’s zombie apocalypse show Z Nation.

For those Nicolas Winding Refn faithfuls on the lookout for news of his next project in the works, we’ve got some exciting news for you. Fresh off his ambitious and strange The Neon Demon, the director is already hard at work on The Avenging Silence, which just got its first detailed synopsis and boy, it’s quite something.

Truly, there is no greater type of entertainment industry news story than “bizarre legal proceedings.” Strange and ill-fated court cases pepper the world of showbiz, and today brought a long-awaited conclusion to one of the weirdest and most nonsensical in recent memory.

It’s starting to seem as if The Neon Demon director Nicolas Winding Refn makes more headlines for the projects he doesn’t do, like Spectre or a potential Batgirl movie, and it seems we can add Doctor Who to the pile. Refn had apparently been turned down for directing an episode of the BBC staple, apart from his own designs on a movie.

It can seem these days like people only make indie movies for the chance to direct blockbusters. Somebody makes a little Sundance movie with a little buzz and suddenly they’re directing the next Jurassic Park or Rocky or Godzilla. Nicolas Winding Refn is one of the few indie filmmakers who has, to date, avoided the temptation to go big. After the cult success of Drive, he had his opportunity to make the jump to the mainstream. And he flirted with some Hollywood projects; for a time, he was attached to the remake of Logan’s Run with Drive star Ryan Gosling. But nothing ever materialized, and Refn continued making stranger and more personal films, with 2013’s Only God Forgives and his latest film, The Neon Demon.

We often take it for granted that our most idiosyncratic artists want no part of the commercial side of Hollywood, but every now and then, someone comes along and changes our minds. Sometimes a filmmaker grew up on the same commercial movies that we all used to love; sometimes they just want to try their hand at working with big casts and even bigger budgets. And sometimes, they just think it would be a blast.