Gina Carano to star in Steven Soderbergh’s Knockout
Steven Soderbergh wants to bring a sense of realism back to the action/spy genre, starting with the casting of mixed…
Steven Soderbergh wants to bring a sense of realism back to the action/spy genre, starting with the casting of mixed martial artist Gina Carano as his leading lady in his upcoming film, Knockout.
In Knockout, Carano will play a woman with incomparable hand-to-hand fighting skills, who gets hired by the government and subsequently involved in a globe-trotting plotline. Although the project may sound similar to James Bond or Jason Bourne’s exploits, there will be more logic involved, especially with regards to high-speed pursuit, Soderbergh told MTV.
“Very, very few people escape high-speed pursuit,” he said. “It happens, but it’s very rare. So I’ve already researched the six times in history it’s happened, so if we do that and she gets out of it, she’s going to get out of it one of the ways they did. It’s that kind of thing. It drives me nuts when I see a movie and I think the police presence would be so immediate. That sequence would be over in three minutes!”
Soderbergh has gone the non-traditional route before, casting porn actress Sasha Grey as the lead in The Girlfriend Experience. Carano, however, would only be the latest in a line of athletes who went on to be movie stars; for example, the 1991 action movie Stone Cold starred ’80s football player Brian Bosworth.
It was previously reported that Knockout would shoot in Ireland, Turkey, and the U.S., but Soderbergh stated he has not settled on an overseas locations, although he did confirm the storyline will begin abroad and work its way back stateside, where Carano’s character grew up.
Given the big budget spy thrillers of late — most notably, Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum — Soderbergh said he was looking to make a film in the genre that was less extravaganza, and more on a human scale.
“I have to go in another direction,” Soderbergh said. “I have to think laterally instead of vertically because I don’t have the budget. I’m not going to have scenes with so much mayhem taking place that in reality the cops would shut it down. So stylistically I don’t want to duplicate what Paul’s been doing. The camera won’t be on the shoulder. It’ll be my take.”
With regards to Carano, the Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven director said he had been watching her for a while and found her interesting. Although he plans to build a movie around her, Soderbergh admitted “she’s an unknown quantity to the audience as a movie actor,” so the other cast members will be largely-familiar actors viewers will be more comfortable around.