An exhilarating end to the year for Ridley Scott fans: while “The Last Duel” has been in theaters since October 13, his next film, “House of Gucci”, will be released on November 24 in France.
If we had to wait a little less than four years between All the Money in the World and The Last Duel, his last two films to date, the wait will be shorter before Ridley Scott’s return to the cinema. Much shorter. Because his next opus, House of Gucci, will be released on November 24 in our theaters, a few days away from the 84 years of the English filmmaker.
A proximity to outings that we owe in particular to the Covid, because The Last Duel was shot from February 2020, when the shots of House of Gucci took place between March and May 2021. But it does not. This isn’t the only explanation, as we’ll have seen, in the space of two months, the sixteenth and seventeenth films signed by Ridley Scott since the early 2000s and his comeback with Gladiator. Proof that he works quickly and (often) well.
And goes from one register to another with disconcerting ease. Because the story of the last judicial duel to have taken place in France, on December 29, 1386, between a knight accused of rape and the victim’s husband, will follow a fresco around the Gucci empire, spread over three decades and whose point culminating in the assassination of Maurizio in 1995.
Two true stories carried by Adam Driver where it is question of death, certainly, but told with different styles. Because we will go from the brutality of the medieval story of the Last Duel to the mixture of darkness and glamor of House of Gucci, in which the actor of Annette will give the answer to Lady Gaga, an unrecognizable Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino or Camille Cottin, who is pursuing her foreign career after her remarkable performance in Stillwater.
At almost 84 years old, Ridley Scott is therefore not his age, when we see the vitality with which he films The Last Duel and its fight scenes. Or this way he has to chain prestigious projects, a subject he mentioned in a press conference during his visit to Paris at the end of September: “We shot both films in the space of two years. That’s how I work: when we near the end of one project, I already look to the next.”
“But you can only do that with a great editor. By the time I finish filming, there’s a director’s cut three weeks later, compared to the usual twelve or fourteen. And from there I dive into it. preparing for the next film. So I’m both in pre-production and post-production, and that keeps me fresh. “
“It’s a bit like when you write: when you reread what you have written, you may notice a lot of things that you don’t like. When I realize, I thus take a step back from the project to be able to determine what is wrong when I see the edit, on every frame and every shot. But when you have a story like this, it doesn’t matter, because it’s really unique. “ While his Last Duel has just been released in our theaters, Ridley Scott will be back very soon.
And it will then follow with Kitbag, biopic on Napoleon Bonaparte worn by Joaquin Phoenix and Jodie Comer intended for Apple TV +, and then intends to tackle the Arlésienne Gladiator 2.
