A pair of good ‘ol Texas boys are teaming up to star in a new crime thriller together, as Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson will lend their Lone Star State attitudes to the L.A.-set thriller Lips Like Sugar, which takes place amid the backdrop of the 1984 Olympic Games.
Brantley Gutierrez will direct from a script by Anthony Tambakis, who wrote one of my all-time favorite sports movies — Warrior, starring Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy. The two of them made for a great duo, and Harrelson and Wilson are just as intriguing.
Rather than playing active-duty cops, they’ll actually be playing former detectives whose lives become intertwined when a teenage girl goes missing shortly after befriending another young girl from a different walk of life due to their shared love of West L.A.’s skate culture.
The film purports to be loosely based on a true story, and it’s certainly easy to believe how city officials might have ignored such a case given the distraction of the Olympics, though that excuse would be of little comfort to my family had it been my loved one who had gone missing.
Harrelson is producing Lips Like Sugar with Gutierrez and Tambakis, as well as Russ Posternak of Post Film, Jeremy Plager of 7 Deuce, Kyle Schember of Subtractive, and Kevin Chinoy and Francesca Silvestri of Freestyle Picture Company, plus Greg Lauritano and Zac Adams.
Tara Craig, Jaykant R. Patel, Rama K. Penta, and Raj Penta will executive produce along with XYZ Films, which will also handle global sales. Anna Schwartz will serve as a co-producer on the project, which is slated to start production later this year. And in other notable news, Oscar nominee Will Butler (Her) from Arcade Fire will compose the score, which certainly sounds cool to me.
Gutierrez is a photographer and director who has previously collaborated with Arcade Fire, as well Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Jack White, Bjork, Rihanna, Emma Stone, The Foo Fighters, and U2, on music videos, live shows, or album artwork.
Wilson is riding high off his turn in Marvel’s Loki, and he has recently been spotted in London, where Deadpool 3 just so happens to be in production. The actor recently starred in IFC Films’ comedy Paint, and he’ll soon be seen in Disney’s The Haunted Mansion as well as Season 2 of Loki.
Harrelson is no stranger to twisted crime tales, having starred in True Detective, though I don’t know how “true” that story really was. He recently returned to HBO to star alongside Justin Theroux in White House Plumbers, and I also enjoyed his turn in Bobby Farrelly‘s comedy Champions. He’s represented by 7 Deuce Entertainment, while Wilson is repped by UTA. The news was first reported by Deadline.
