Each Episode Of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Amazon Series Is Apparently 90 Minutes Long
Based on the short teaser we saw about a year ago, and the fact that it's been a year and Nicolas Winding Refn's Too Old to Die Young still hasn't so much as been given a premiere date, it would seem that Amazon is giving him an insane amount of creative freedom. Were there any lingering doubts, take this quote from Refn's longtime collaborator and composer Cliff Martinez: while speaking with Screen Daily at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Martinez said that, for him, the biggest difference between working on this and Refn's other projects was "just the endurance to do what I think of as a ten-hour movie – or a 16-hour movie in the case of Too Old to Die Young."
Martinez went on to say that he's been working on the score for the Amazon original series for about a year: "For me the challenge has been to not get burned out and jaded and complacent, but to try to stay engaged and focused for that much time." Just signing a one-year apartment lease gives me hives, so I can't imagine how Martinez feels at this point. But let's rewind for a hot sec, to the moment when Martinez described the series as a "16-hour movie." That means that each installment of the 10-episode series clocks in at around 80 minutes – we're talkin' feature-length episodes here. For some – like those who aren't particularly enamored with Refn and his more irreverently self-indulgent tendencies – the length of this series may seem unreasonable. For myself, and those of us who would follow the other Danish enfant terrible to the ends of the cinematic wastelands, this is excellent news.
Anyway, this is a fun update, especially since it's been so long since we've heard anything about Too Old to Die Young. As previously reported, the show stars Miles Teller as a grieving police officer who gets embroiled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld, bringing him into the orbit of various gangs and ruthless organizations. Co-written with acclaimed author Ed Brubaker, the series also stars Jena Malone, John Hawkes, and William Baldwin – and it still does not have a premiere date.
