An intriguing pairing is on the horizon, as Chris Hemsworth and current Emmy nominee Pedro Pascal are attached to star in Crime 101, a movie based on a Don Winslow novella that will be directed by Bart Layton (American Animals).
Crime 101 follows Detective Lou Lubesnick as he investigates a string of high-profile jewelry store robberies that are taking place up and down the Pacific Coast. Though some believe them to be the work of Colombian cartels, Lubesnick thinks a veteran thief hit ’em all, and it’s only a matter of time before he pops his head up again for one last score.
Deadline broke the news, reporting that Netflix and Amazon are in a bidding war for the red-hot package, though the latter appears to have the edge right now.
Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce for Working Title alongside Shane Salerno of the Story Factory, which represents Winslow. The producers put the package together with CAA, and though there are no formal deals due to the strike, Hemsworth and Pascal have been earmarked for the leads for a while now. At this point, however, this is simply a rights deal with a UK-based production company (Working Title).
Crime 101 was one of six short stories that appeared in Winslow’s collection Broken, which HarperCollins published in 2020. Other titles include Paradise, Sunset, The Last Ride, The San Diego Zoo, and Broken, from which the collection takes its title.
While Hemsworth and Pascal make for a hell of a duo for a gritty crime drama, it’s Layton’s presence behind the camera that reassures me that Winslow’s story is in good hands here. I’ve seen American Animals nearly 10 times, and it’s utterly fantastic — something I haven’t been shy about on Twitter, where I know Winslow follows me.
Believe me, I’d love to delude myself into thinking that I turned the bestselling author onto Layton’s work, but I won’t kid myself. Layton serves as the creative director of RAW, which is one of the UK’s top production companies, with credits such as Don’t F**k With Cats, The Tinder Swindler, and Three Identical Strangers.
I even bought George Dawes Green‘s 2008 novel Ravens simply because Layton was developing it as his follow-up to American Animals, though I heard it ran into some financing issues — a bummer, as it features a juicy premise. Suffice it to say, some projects aren’t meant to be, but I’m confident that with Hemsworth and Pascal in tow, Crime 101 will most definitely get made… by one streamer or another.
If you haven’t seen American Animals, the critically acclaimed film stars Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, and Jared Abrahamson as college students who decide to rob a bunch of rare books from their university’s library, and it’s fantastic, blurring the lines between documentary and narrative filmmaking.
