Despite announcing his retirement from feature directing following 2013’s Side Effects and Behind the Candelabra, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is back behind the camera this year for the heist caper Logan Lucky, and during an interview with Entertainment Weekly he has explained what drew him to this latest film.
“I was sitting there on [The Knick] set, realizing that this is the job that I should be doing,” said Soderbergh. “This is my job. I should be directing stuff. Nobody’s waiting around for my paintings. So I kind of flipped a switch. I got reconnected with what I like about the job… I wasn’t really thinking about movies… until this script came in over the transom. If it hadn’t, I think everything would be TV oriented.”
“On the most obvious level, it’s the complete inversion of an Ocean’s movie,” he continued. “It’s an anti-glam version of an Ocean’s movie. Nobody dresses nice. Nobody has nice stuff. They have no money. They have no technology. It’s all rubber band technology, and that’s what I thought was fun about it. It seemed familiar to me, but different enough. The landscape, the characters, and the canvass were the complete opposite of an Ocean’s film. What was weird is that I was working as a producer on Ocean’s Eight while we were shooting Logan, and it was kind of head-spinning. That’s like a proper Ocean’s film. This is a version of an Ocean’s movie that’s up on cement blocks in your front yard.”
Trying to reverse a family curse, brothers Jimmy (Channing Tatum) and Clyde Logan (Adam Driver) set out to execute an elaborate robbery during the legendary Coca-Cola 600 race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Logan Lucky is set for release on August 18th in the States and on August 25th in the UK and features a cast that also includes Daniel Craig, Hilary Swank, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Dwight Yoakam, Sebastian Stan, David Denman, Macon Blair, Jack Quaid, and Brian Gleeson.
Originally published April 25, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
