The death of creativity has been a major talking point for what feels like forever already, and there aren’t many better examples coming down the pipeline than the Ocean’s prequel rumored to reunite Barbie stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
While Steven Soderbergh’s original was a dazzling crime caper that remains one of the genre’s 21st Century highlights, tracing the origins of the franchise underlines that studios are more than happy to keep returning to the well in favor of trying something original, daring, or even halfway interesting.
Austin Powers director Jay Roach was linked with the director’s chair when the project was first announced, and according to a new listing from Production List, shooting is tentatively scheduled to begin by the end of the month on the 1960s-set story. Of course, that’s subject to change given the writers’ strike, but does anyone really need another Ocean’s in their lives?
Regardless of how great Robbie and Gosling are, we’re still talking about the prequel to a remake that launched a trilogy and got a spin-off, so there aren’t really many ways left to twist the IP into any new directions. The biggest burning question is why it even needs to be an Ocean’s movie at all, when you’d think the prospect of pairing up two A-listers in a Parisian heist flick set at the height of the Swinging Sixties would be more than enough to generate interest without tethering it to an established brand.
We don’t make the decisions, though, so Ocean’s it is.