Nicolas Winding Refn Returns To Amazon For Crime Series

Rocketing to the front of this morning’s “news that won’t be topped today” race is word from Variety that director Nicolas Winding Refn is teaming up with writer Ed Brubaker (The Fade Out, Kill Or Be Killed) to create a ten-episode series for Amazon concerning - and we’re paraphrasing here - “the existential journeys that turn killers into samurai with the criminal underworld of Los Angeles." 

Titled Too Old To Die Young, the project is described as a return to the sensibilities of Refn’s Pusher trilogy, but folks who’ve longed for the filmmaker to return to the quiet cool of Drive probably have cause to get hype here as well.

Variety is slim on other details (A-list actors are being pursued and, one imagines, will be obtained), but the idea of Brubaker bringing his distinctive crime fiction to the screen with Refn directing is just delicious. After diving into prestige television with Westworld last year, Brubaker seems poised (as co-writer and executive producer) to make even more of a mark here. 

So, there it is - not even 8AM on the West Coast and the "best news of the day" gauntlet has been thrown down. It sounds as if Amazon took a look at its last collaboration with Refn - the glittery, haunting Neon Demon - and said “yes, more please.” We know the feeling.