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Sgt. Rock, DC’s superhero flick to team Luca Guadagnino and The Penguin‘s Colin Farrell, has halted production plans, sources have confirmed to Deadline.
While the film was supposed to enter production in the coming months, we’re now told it’ll look to shoot next summer. Studio insiders said that ultimately, shooting this summer was untenable, as the team would have had to rush through prep to hit the right weather conditions at the right time. The film is being shot primarily on location in the U.K. and shooting exteriors in the dead of winter would not have been optimal conditions for cast, crew and equipment.
The Sgt. Rock news comes as a shock as the film was greenlit months ago with a $65 million budget and plan to shoot this August. Sources close to the project say Guadagnino was scouting locations last week and that the studio was far down the line with Alien: Romulus breakout David Jonsson to join Farrell, as well as Challengers star Mike Faist, who also had an offer.
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In Sgt. Rock, a World War II-set superhero actioner, Farrell was set to play Sgt. Franklin John Rock, the character created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, who first debuted in the 1959 DC issue Our Army at War as a WWII infantry soldier. The character gained stature in 1977 when he got his own comic book series, which ran through 1988.
Sgt. Rock was conceived as part of the DC universe overseen by studio chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran, rather than as part of the world inhabited by Farrell’s The Penguin and overseen by The Batman’s Matt Reeves. Farrell agreed to take on the title role following the exit of Daniel Craig, who kicked tires for a moment to reteam with Guadagnino on the heels of the duo’s collaboration on A24’s Queer. The project was set to reteam Guadagnino with Justin Kuritzkes, his screenwriter on Challengers and Queer.
Guadagnino will next see the release of After the Hunt, his #Me Too-themed thriller for Amazon MGM Studios, starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri, which will be released on October 10. The filmmaker had also recently been looking to mount a revamp of American Psycho for Lionsgate, but we’ll have to stay tuned to see which project the filmmaker commits to next, with the delay on Sgt. Rock.
Next up for DC Studios is Gunn’s Superman, which hits theaters on July 11. THR broke the Sgt. Rock news.
“}]] ‘Sgt. Rock’ has halted production plans at DC, sources have confirmed to Deadline. Read More