MOVIE NEWS – Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie are circling back to the kind of crime story that made them a defining duo. The long-gestating project is called Viva La Madness, and it is finally moving forward for real. And yes, the cast looks like someone deliberately pulled a few familiar faces out of the past and lined them up for a new run.

After more than a decade, Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie are lining up to reunite for a long-awaited crime-thriller follow-up. The project is titled Viva La Madness and is positioned as a semi-sequel to the acclaimed 2004 Daniel Craig thriller Layer Cake, and it is finally becoming a reality as Statham gears up to reconnect with several names from earlier chapters of his career while the ensemble finally clicks into place.

According to Deadline, Viva La Madness not only pairs Statham again with Snatch and Wrath of Man director Guy Ritchie, but also brings in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels co-star Vinnie Jones and The Mechanic co-star Ben Foster, with additional casting that includes Jason Isaacs (The White Lotus, the Harry Potter franchise), Babs Olusanmokun (Dune, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare), Camila Mendes (Riverdale, Palm Springs), Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting, The Crown, Elementary), and singer-songwriter Raúl Alejandro, who is making his feature-film debut.

Not exactly a direct sequel, Viva La Madness will function as a companion piece to Matthew Vaughn’s 2004 crime thriller Layer Cake, with Statham stepping into the role of the unnamed hero previously played by Daniel Craig, and the film is being produced by Statham through Punch Palace Productions and by Gangs of London’s Thomas Benski via Lumina Studios, alongside Toff Guy Films, as production finally gets underway after the project was first announced back in 2015.

Viva La Madness Takes the Action Global

Based on the follow-up novel by Layer Cake author J. J. Connolly, it is still unclear how closely Guy Ritchie’s adaptation will stick to the source material. But the synopsis of the book can at least give a sense of what Statham’s drug dealer is set to face, and you can read it below.

From the many layers of the London underworld portrayed in Layer Cake, Viva la Madness moves to international crime with trans-Atlantic drug deals, money laundering and high-tech electronic fraud, portrayed with the same uncanny believability. The anonymous hero of Layer Cake is pulled back into the drug game before he can escape to a sunny retirement – in an authentic but dazzling combination of London low-life, Caribbean high-life and Venezuelan drug cartels toting machine-guns in Mayfair. The brilliance and the madness is back: ‘Viva la madness!’

With a lineup this packed, including a reunion between Jason Statham, Guy Ritchie, and Vinnie Jones and several more familiar faces from their filmmaking past, Viva La Madness is shaping up as a must-watch for fans of the action star and the Lock, Stock director.

After titles like Aladdin, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Fountain of Youth, and more, the crime thriller is also expected to steer Ritchie back toward the British gangster lane he is best known for. “This project feels so brilliantly British,” a source said of the film. “It’s going to be loud, fast and unapologetically patriotic.”

Forrás: MovieWeb