Over the past decade, through such films as Kill List, High-Rise and Sightseers, it’s become quite clear that Wheatley has no interest in giving audiences the same film they’ve seen a dozen times before. Each one of his films is something idiosyncratic, bold and impossible for any other filmmaker to recreate. With his next film Freakshift, which follows “band of misfit cops who hunt down and kill nocturnal underground monsters,” it sounds like he’ll once again be venturing into some unconventional territory.
While speaking to Collider’s Steve Weintraub to promote his latest film, Free Fire (read our review here), Wheatley was asked about Freakshift and what fans can expect from the film. He replied, “It’s monsters, shotguns, trucks, fighting at night, and it’s in the future, things coming out like crabs. Stuff with claws. That’s the elevator pitch. And August is when we shoot it.”
Weintraub followed up by asking Wheatley if the film would be a gorefest, and the director responded, “It will be dynamic and exciting the same way that Free Fire is. But it won’t be sadistic. But it will be fun. It’s a kind of a 50s B-Movie done through the prism of Hill Street Blues and Doom.”
Wheatley will be co-writing Freakshift alongside his partner Amy Jump and directing a cast that includes Alicia Vikander and Armie Hammer. While the film will mark the first collaboration between Wheatley and Vikander, the director worked with Hammer on Free Fire. Additionally, Hammer and Vikander shared the screen in Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.; look forward to watching the two face off against giant crab monsters.
Originally published April 20, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
