‘Copenhagen Cowboy’: Netflix Drops Trailer for Refn Sequence (EXCLUSIVE)

It took a pandemic and a lockdown for “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn to make a directorial comeback in Denmark, the place he had delivered the “Pusher” trilogy early in his profession.

“Typically the strangest issues are available in mysterious methods, and that is a kind of,” Refn says of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” his Netflix authentic sequence, slated to world premiere Sept. 9 on the Venice Film Festival.

Since “Drive,” Winding Refn has directed the Bangkok-set thriller “Solely God Forgives,” with “Drive” star Ryan Gosling; “The Neon Demon,” with Elle Fanning enjoying an aspiring mannequin in Los Angeles.; and the Amazon Prime Video sequence “Too Outdated to Die Younger,” starring Miles Teller as a grieving cop in crime-ridden Southern California. He was getting ready one other undertaking set overseas when the pandemic hit.

“We had been caught as a household again in Denmark and I got here up with this concept,” he says, noting his spouse, Liv Corfixen, govt produced the sequence, and his two daughters, Lola and Lizzielou, star in it. “It grew to become a beautiful artistic course of the place I used to be now not residing in two separate worlds as a creator by day and a household man by evening. It’s a brand new chapter in my method of working but additionally in our lives.”

Refn has confronted some criticism over the usage of gratuitous violence in his movies, notably “Solely God Forgives” and “The Neon Demon.” However he says he’s “not a violent particular person.”

“If there’s violence in what I do, it’s as a result of I consider that’s what the portray wanted,” he says, including that “artwork is an act of violence. It’s meant to violate you, penetrate your thoughts. It’s like giving beginning. It’s a ravishing, but additionally a violent act. “

Whereas the plot of “Copenhagen Cowboy” stays beneath wraps, Refn means that it has better depth than a few of his earlier work.

“It seems like a cliché, however the older you get, the extra involved you turn out to be concerning the world. I believe it’s a duty to take that severely,” he says.

“’Too Outdated to Die Younger’ was actually a prediction of what America has became post-Trump. It was a present made at that particular time with what was being fed to me by means of media and what my very own considerations and obsessions had been. ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ is a continuation of that,” he continues. 

The filmmaker additionally says the brand new sequence had a fantasy ingredient, “alongside the traces of what Hans Christian Andersen would do, a fairy story that displays every little thing round.” He says the “hero” of the present (performed by Angela Bundalovic) is “virtually primarily based on on his spouse, “no less than relating to her powers.”

Refn additionally praised Netflix for understanding his imaginative and prescient from the very begin and giving him “a variety of enthusiasm transferring ahead.” “It was a very quick and pleasurable course of. I created the present, made the take care of Netflix and employed some fantastic feminine writers (Sara Isabella Jönsson, Johanne Algren) from Denmark and we wrote it in six months. A yr later, we’re launching it in Venice.” He additionally produced the present by means of his banner NWR, together with Lene Børglum and Christina Bostofte Erritzøe.

“Copenhagen Cowboy” appears as trendy as Refn’s earlier work, with a key crew together with well-known cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck (“A Hijacking”), manufacturing designer Gitte Malling (“Land of Mine”) and music by Cliff Martinez, Peter Peter, Peter Kyed and Julian Winding.

Though he’s made a number of movies within the U.S., Winding Refn by no means directed one for a studio. He admits that he was approached to direct a James Bond film (believed to be “Spectre”) however that was it. “We simply met and it was a beautiful assembly. However , not every little thing is meant to occur. Typically it’s extra enjoyable to speak about it than truly realizing it,” he says.

He says the very best piece of recommendation he’s ever obtained was from Elia Kazan, who instructed him some 26 years in the past, after he had directed “Pusher”: “Do it your method.”

Whereas he had a cathartic expertise working from dwelling in Denmark, Refn suggests he’s not carried out exploring Los Angeles.

“I’ve huge love for Los Angeles and dealing there,” he says. “It’s constructed on a desert — it’s like an alien panorama and an alien surroundings. So for me, it’s like flying to Mars and capturing there.”

A reunion with Gosling may be within the playing cards for Refn. “Ryan could be very a lot a part of my life. We’re very interconnected to one another’s existence creatively and personally, and I really like him very a lot and I’m certain we’ll work once more sooner or later. We discuss it on a regular basis.”

Watch the trailer under: