Is Nico­las Wind­ing Refn about to go main­stream on us?

Renowned for his styl­ish aes­thet­ic, love of extreme vio­lence and use of expres­sion­is­tic sym­bol­ism, Nico­las Wind­ing Refn is a divi­sive film­mak­er with a ded­i­cat­ed cult fol­low­ing. He’s also a direc­tor who has flirt­ed with main­stream suc­cess in the past, so it may come as no sur­prise to learn that Refn is report­ed to be team­ing up with screen­writ­ers Neil Purvis and Robert Wade – co-writ­ers of five James Bond out­ings includ­ing Sky­fall and Spec­tre – on an as-yet unti­tled Asian-set action thriller.

Refn made his name in the mid-late ​’90s with slick genre fea­tures Push­er and Bleed­er, but it was 2011’s Ryan Gosling vehi­cle, Dri­ve, a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess packed with style and sub­stance, that saw Refn earn his spurs as a seri­ous art-house vision­ary. He fol­lowed that up with Only God For­gives, which despite being beau­ti­ful­ly lensed proved too cryp­tic and too bewil­der­ing for some viewers.

Giv­en that the screen­writ­ing duo he’s col­lab­o­rat­ing with are known for pro­duc­ing high­ly mar­ketable scripts, this lat­est project could be a water­shed moment in Refn’s career. Before that, how­ev­er, audi­ences will get the chance to see the director’s hor­ror thriller Neon Demon, which cen­tres around aspir­ing mod­el Jesse (Elle Fan­ning), whose youth­ful vital­i­ty is devoured by a group of beau­ty-obsessed women in mod­ern-day Los Ange­les. Ear­ly pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al for the film chan­nels the same neon-lit aes­thet­ic as Dri­ve and Only God For­gives, but the fact that the dis­tri­b­u­tion rights have been bought by Ama­zon Stu­dios sug­gests a con­fi­dence in its main­stream potential.

Giv­en that all of Refn’s films to date have pro­voked plen­ty of dis­cus­sion while man­ag­ing to retain a dis­tinct visu­al style, we’re intrigued to find out exact­ly where he plans on tak­ing us with each of these upcom­ing projects.